Sceptres and Strategies
by DeeMG
Summary: Trapped in a time of bubonic plague and bandits, the Turtles struggle to keep an entire town safe - and find a way back to their own time and place. Sequel to The Arena. Mirage-verse
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1**

"Can we go home now?"

Leonardo suppressed the urge to snap at Michaelangelo for asking that question _again_, and kept moving. They'd been sent out by Splinter to do a lengthy run across the darkened rooftops, and by the gods, they'd _do_ a lengthy run across the rooftops!

He trusted that his silence would be enough of an answer. From the muffled grumbling that followed, it seemed like he'd gotten his point across. None of them really enjoyed running in the ice and slush of late winter, but Splinter told them to, and so it had to be done. _If we only do the things we enjoy, we don't grow,_ he told himself.

He didn't say it out loud.

They circled around Central Park, hopping from rooftop to rooftop on the east side, heading south. Out of the corner of his eye, Leonardo saw Donatello look wistfully in the direction of the Metropolitan Museum. Mike skidded in a patch of ice, but broke free of it gracefully and with minimal fuss, so Leo didn't say anything. Raphael's voice briefly lifted enough to carry over the wind, as he harangued his brothers for their lack of speed, before falling back into determined silence. None of them were happy to be out in the cold.

When they got to the corner at 5th and 59th, Leo signaled a break. They took shelter among the dormant air conditioning units on top of the toy store and stretched their tired muscles, careful to keep out of sight of any lingering people walking below. Leo eyed the taller building next to them with misgivings – it wasn't likely that anyone could spot them, dressed as they were in winter camouflage, but he didn't like to take chances.

He took advantage of the break to do a quick survey of his brothers. Michaelangelo still grumbled about the cold and the slush, but he kept it to a low minimum, and could safely be assumed to be all right, if a little more uncomfortable than he would like. Raphael, who had been uncharacteristically quiet the whole night, leaned on a support wall nearby, stretching the kinks out of his calves and doing his own review of the others. His eyes glittered in the murky light as he met Leo's gaze, and one corner of his mouth twitched up before he turned away. He also could be assumed to be all right.

That left Donatello, who was standing with his back to them, craning his neck to get a glimpse into the computer store in the square below while still sticking to the shadows. While Leo – and Raph – watched, he shifted his weight onto his left foot and stretched his other leg. He still favored the right leg, a year after the shattered kneecap had been replaced, and Leo knew that the cold weather made the knee and the previously-broken bones of Don's feet ache. But he hadn't complained. No, it wouldn't be like Don to complain, and that was why his brothers watched him.

But he seemed fine, too, and Leo relaxed fractionally.

They struck out for home after a few minutes, when the lingering winter wind began to annoy them again. Mike put on a burst of speed. "Last one to St. Patrick's is a rotten egg!" he crowed as he swung away on a grappling line.

They ran again. It was dangerous to be so close to 5th Avenue, even during the early morning hours. Tourists never really cleared off the streets, and there was always traffic. But they'd gotten in the habit of going past Rockefeller Plaza during the holidays, mostly so Mike could get his fill of the Christmas trees and other decorations, and it was a comfortable run for them even after all of the decorations were gone. And the sense of danger helped keep them sharp.

"I wish it could be Christmas all year," Mike said wistfully, as they moved away from the Plaza and headed toward Penn Station.

Don cocked his head. "Then it wouldn't be special. It would just be ordinary, like every other day."

"Yeah, maybe," Mike allowed. "But wouldn't it be cool? Decorations everywhere, people being a little nicer to each other, special foods…"

"Those 'special foods' took you twice as long to cook as anything else," Raphael scoffed. "Thought we were gonna starve, waiting for that turkey to be done."

"But it was _great_, once it was ready," Mike's grin flashed white in the gloom.

Leo didn't say anything. He listened to their voices – gauged their levels of exhaustion, irritation, and general attitude from the subtle changes in tone, breath, diction, and volume – to determine if they'd had enough, or if they could still go on. From the faint slur in Don's voice, and the lowering of Raph's personal volume, he reached his decision: they could go on if they had to, but not for much longer. Not at maximum efficiency, that is. By his estimates, he had about another hour, or a handful of miles, before losing their focus completely. "Let's head for home, guys."

"Yay," Mike cheered briefly. Don rolled his eyes at the sound.

They'd only made it another three blocks before Don started limping slightly, confirming Leo's sense of timing. No one said anything. Leonardo made a mental note to make sure that Don took some aspirin when they got home, and slowed his pace to keep him in view. With a nod, Raph took the lead. It could be dangerous to let Raph lead – in some moods, he liked to take them on the most dangerous routes he could find, where they were either likely to find a fight, or have a difficult time finding steady footing on the crumbling rooftops. But he'd glanced at Don as he moved up, and Leo knew that Raph would take them home by the fastest and shortest route.

Home was still a mile away when a light pulsed in the sky right over their heads.

"Heads up!" Leo called unnecessarily – they were already spreading out, weapons in hands.

"Haven't we seen this before?" Don wondered out loud.

Mike groaned. "Yeah, it's what usually happens right before everything turns to crap."

A slim figure, wearing a cloak that billowed in the force of the passage, dropped out of the pulsing light, which condensed itself down to a pinpoint and disappeared. The figure adjusted an improbably-designed hat and looked around. "There you are! Hi, guys!" she said brightly.

"See what I mean?" Mike holstered his nunchaku with a grumble.

"Renet, what are you doing here?" Leo sheathed one blade, but kept the other one in hand. It made him feel better, when dealing with the Timestress, to have a weapon as close as possible.

"Looking for you guys, of course!" She preened, in that odd way she had. Raph's eyes roamed over her appreciatively, and Leo couldn't really blame him – she was definitely dressed to attract attention. She was also, as far as he could tell, the same age she'd been when they first met her a few years earlier.

"Renet," he said cautiously. "Don't take this wrong, but…when was the last time you saw us?"

"I just met you guys a few, um, what do you call them? Weeks? No, days, it was days! I met you a few days ago. Well, by my time, of course. But it's been a few years for you, right?" She blinked at him.

Leo resisted the urge to just turn and run – she'd probably just find them again. He answered tightly, "Yes. Years." Renet as a novice Timestress was a scary thought. He'd hoped they had seen the last of her at that age. Time travel in general made him deeply uncomfortable, but time travel in the hands of a newbie struck him as something slightly less dangerous than letting Shadow loose on a busy highway. Though they'd run into her as an adult, and accomplished, Timestress once – so he supposed she must eventually figure it all out, in order to grow into the role. He just wished she could do her learning with someone else's family rather than his.

"Oh, this is gonna be so much fun!" she squealed, bouncing up and down. Raph's eyes stayed glued to her…watches…and his grin became even more feral than usual. "Lord Simultaneous is actually sending me on an assignment! Like, without supervision and stuff! Guess he's starting to trust me, after all of that Savanti-what's-his-name stuff the other day, right? With that little grey dude who was, like, so grim and stuff?"

On Renet's other side, Don sucked in a deep breath and turned away, visibly fighting off the urge to say something. He grabbed Mike's arm and shook his head once, hard, in an urgent but silent warning. Leo could see the idea blossom in Mike's head: _She doesn't know about the second encounter with Savanti Romero yet…and she definitely doesn't know about the time she saved us from Savanti Juliet!_

Aloud, Leo said, "So, if you're on an assignment, why are you hanging around New York, talking to us?" He dropped his free hand and made a 'back away' gesture that he hoped his brothers would see, while he took a slow and hopefully subtle step backwards himself. "It's nothing going on around here, is it?"

She laughed too loud and too long at the idea. "No, silly! New York's a protectorate! If anything happened here, even a minor temporal slip, there'd be swarms of, like, senior level big wigs and all sorts of serious people all over the place! I'd, like, be sent out for coffee or something, so I wouldn't get in anyone's way." She paused, and for a second there was a shadow in her eyes. Then she shook it off. "No, I'm here because I, like – oh, this is embarrassing! Only, Lord Simultaneous says I shouldn't be embarrassed to ask you guys anything, partly because I'm, like, from the 79th Level of Null Time and all, and partly because you guys are, like, my best friends," she ran out of breath and looked around at them hopefully while she caught it again, "or at least, you will be. Someday?"

At that, Raphael finally tore his eyes away from Renet's curves and shot a grim look at Leo.

Leo hesitated. He understood exactly the apprehension that he saw in his brother's face. But in that hesitation, he lost control of the situation. "What did you want to ask us, Renet?" Don asked quietly.

"I need your help," she said simply.

"Okay," Mike shrugged.

Raphael slapped his hand to his forehead and turned away, grimacing.

Renet, however, perked up even more. "You will?! Oh, thank you, thank you!" she darted over and gave first Mike, then Don, big hugs that made them shuffle away uncomfortably; Raph scowled when he realized that the hugs were not coming his way. "It's really a big deal, only I'm not sure about the details – this is, like, a test to see if I can really become Lord Simultaneous' apprentice and stuff, and get to do more interesting things than just, like, dust books all day long and boring things like that."

"So what _do_ you know about this?" Leo broke in impatiently.

She unhooked something dreadfully familiar from her belt – Leo hadn't noticed it before, in his determined attempt to keep his eyes on her face – and waved it around. "The Time Sceptre knows where we're going, and stuff. I just have to tell it we're ready, and – oops."

The Sceptre started glowing at her words.

"Ah, crap," Raph darted in, closing the distance between himself and his brothers; Don and Mike stepped closer, too, and the four of them watched in unified dread as the too-familiar nimbus of light and magical energy spread outward from the Sceptre. They all tensed when it washed over them – and then the ground fell out from under them and they were tumbling through one of the Time Sceptre's portals. Leo had just enough time to wish that he'd sheathed his second sword, so he didn't chance cutting anyone in their headlong flight through time, when the light suddenly brightened around them to a painful intensity. He squinted against it until it blinded him. And then he had to close his eyes completely and trust that his brothers were still with him.

_This is going on way too long,_ he thought.

And unlike the other times they'd traveled via Time Sceptre, it _hurt!_ A pounding headache started right behind Leo's eyes. In seconds, the pain spread to his stomach, too. Leo wondered if it was possible to throw up in time travel – he'd have to remember to ask Don about it, if they ever got out of this. Somewhere nearby – above? below? beside? he couldn't tell – he heard one of his brothers groan in pain, too.

The light faded abruptly. Instead of falling through time, they were just falling. Leo hit the ground, hard, and laid there without daring to move. He blinked, mostly to prove that he still could. There was a hard weight across his legs, and he had just enough sense left to realize that it was the shell of one of his brothers.

Brothers…the sense of family that drove most of Leo's life drove him, then, to haul himself carefully up onto one shaking arm. He had to rest there until the blackness receded from the edges of his vision.

Someone coughed nearby, deep and painfully, and Leo instinctively whipped his head around to see who it was – but the movement was too much for him. The blackness rushed in before he could see much. His trembling arm gave out, and he fell again.

His last thought, before unconsciousness claimed him, was: _Somebody's missing…_


	2. Chapter 2

I like to warn everyone: this chapter contains some death-related grossness.

**Chapter 2**

_I hate getting knocked out…_was Raphael's first thought as he struggled his way back to consciousness.

His second thought was the wordless awareness that he was about to lose his dinner.

He lurched up onto his hands and knees before he even got his eyes open, and threw up. The world seemed to shift and tilt around him in unpleasant waves, and he dug his fingers into something rocky and gritty; he fought to keep his knees anchored in the same surface. His heart pounded in his ears. He felt himself wavering in spite of his own best efforts, and snarled in between spasms. Raphael couldn't stop himself from falling –

– and then there were firm hands on his shoulders. Someone knelt next to him, spoke quietly to him, and kept him from pitching forward into the pool of his own sick. _Don_, his struggling consciousness supplied, and he relaxed marginally. Donatello wouldn't be so calm if there were immediate danger.

At last, the internal convulsions stopped. He was still dizzy and nauseous, but he slitted his eyes open and tried to anchor himself in the world while he let Don urge him to his feet. "Where…we…?"

"Don't know yet, but we're safe at the moment," Don coaxed him wordlessly forward, and Raphael allowed himself to be led for lack of any better idea or ability.

Bright sunlight fell on his face like a blow, and he winced away from it. Don tugged on his arm, urging him downward, and Raphael sat, grumbling. He squinted at his brother. If he couldn't get a handle on where they were, he figured, he could start getting an idea of _how _they were. "Y'okay?"

"Yeah. I woke up a little while ago. The nausea and dizziness goes away in about fifteen minutes, if my experience is typical."

_Heh. It would be just like Don to time how long it took to be sick,_ Raphael thought. He didn't know how his brother did it – he still felt sick and totally disoriented. The world still seemed sharply tilted in a way that made his sense of balance into an enemy. He could barely string two thoughts together, much less actual words. "Where are…?"

"They're okay – they're back in the cave," Don jerked his thumb back over his shoulder. Raphael trusted that there really was a cave behind him, and that Don had really understood his broken question; he couldn't seem to get up the energy to turn his head and check for himself. "They'll probably be as bad off as you when they wake up. I'd like to scout around for a little bit, and see if I can come up with some fresh water or something. Can you handle things without me for a while?"

Raph focused carefully. The sunshine was less painful than it had been, but it still made Don's face look pale and washed out. The mental confusion receded enough for him to finally understand that the extreme tilt to the ground wasn't just his imagination, but an actual slope running away from where they sat to a thickly wooded area below.

_Cave…woods…where'd that dippy blonde take us this time? _he wondered dully. Aloud he said, "Gonna strangle Mike f'r this…when he wakes up…"

Don smiled briefly, though it didn't reach the tension around his eyes. "Here, take this," and he pressed the hilt of a sword into Raph's hand.

He looked down at it and saw without surprise that it was one of Leo's prized blades. Dirt and decaying leaves marred the bright surface.

"Leo must've still had it in his hand when we went through the portal. Keep an eye on it for him, will you? I'll be right back." And then he was gone, sliding away down the slope and vanishing into the woods before Raphael could voice an objection.

There wasn't any way he could've articulated his objections even if he weren't dizzy and confused. He couldn't pinpoint it with words, but there was something…off…about Don's face in those few moments when Raph could clearly see him. He sat in the sunlight and waited for his brain to catch up to the rest of him while he thought about it. The sun felt good on his face, and he tilted his closed eyes up to it for a minute, vaguely aware that it was a bad idea to sit there in plain view, with his eyes closed, in an unknown territory. He wondered if he should take off the winter camouflage he was still wearing, but gave the thought up after a minute – a chilly wind flowed down from the hill behind him, and it would probably be cold when night finally came…

_Donnie's freaked out,_ he realized suddenly.

He opened his eyes and looked in the direction of the woods with alarm. The pale expression, the tight line of his mouth, the way Don didn't really meet his eyes – it all added up to a rare but significant thing in Raph's world: a freak-out by his normally calm brother. The last time he'd seen that had been in the woods on D'Hoonib…

Behind him, someone stirred and groaned. Then he heard something that made him even more uneasy: the sounds of throwing up.

He set the sword aside carefully and went to tend to whichever brother had just come back to consciousness. He made sure to kick more leaves and dirt over the vomit on his way in and out of the cave.

A few minutes later, he and Leonardo sat outside in the sun. Leo squinted around, made momentarily stupid by the lingering effects of the sickness. Raphael carefully cleaned the dirt and muck off the blade, slow because there wasn't any point in rushing it – they didn't have anywhere else to be, and he still felt watery and dizzy himself. The gleam of the blade drew his brother's attention, and Raph made sure to take even more care – the swords might not be his favorite weapon, but he knew Leo was particular about them, and there was no point in giving Leo a reason to think that Raph was careless.

"Where's…?" Leo asked suddenly.

"Mike's back there, sleeping it off," Raph answered tightly. It made him nervous that Michaelangelo was still out of it.

"…and…?"

He sighed. "Donnie's gone for a walk, to see if he can find us some water and stuff." He snuck a glance at the expression on Leo's face – the 'eldest' brother wore a look of such open confusion and wariness that Raphael could read exactly what he was thinking. "Look, I know – he shouldn't've gone alone. Okay? I know it. But he slipped outta here while I was still trying to work out which way was up, and I don't know when he'll be back, but when he gets back, I'll tear a strip offa him for doing it. You don't have to do it. Okay?" Raph felt defensive in the face of Leo's obvious disagreement with what had happened, and silently berated himself for both the defensiveness and the inability to stop Donatello's departure in the first place.

Leo dropped his head into his hands and rubbed deeply at his own temples for a minute. Raph finished up his cleaning of the blade and took advantage of Leo's pose to slip the sword into its proper sheath. Under his hand, he felt Leo mumble something. "What?"

At just that moment, Mike started hacking. Raph pulled himself to his feet with an effort and went to drag the last of his brothers out into the sunshine.

By the time he came back out, leading Mike carefully around the previous messes they'd all made, Leo was standing up and squinting off into the treeline. Mike collapsed to the ground with a groan and covered his face.

"What did you say, Fearless?" Raph patted Mike's shell roughly through the winter camo.

Leo blinked at him. "I said, if Don caught you while you felt like I do, then it's no wonder you couldn't stop him."

Raph looked away. "Yeah, well…he still shouldn't've done it."

"No, he shouldn't. Cover your ears, Mike," and Leo lifted his fingers to his mouth and blew a high, shrill whistle.

There was no answer.

Leo fidgeted. "…he's probably just out of earshot," he murmured, mostly to himself, and sank back to the ground. "I hope…"

Mike leaned on Raph and slitted his eyes at Leo. "Whr's…'net…?"

There was no answer to that, either. Raph felt the rise of panic in his chest like it was another wave of sickness, and fought it off with an effort. _Renet!_ He'd even thought about her, briefly, to curse her actions in dropping them in this place, but hadn't followed the thought further to wonder where she was.

Finally Leo said, "Maybe Don found her." But he didn't sound convinced.

…

Mike was on his feet again, albeit shakily, and Leo was openly developing plans to track Don through the woods, when they heard the whistle.

Raph responded, a little more loudly and angrily than necessary. _Donnie knows he shouldn't just wander off like that,_ he reminded himself. As they recovered, he'd gotten more angry about Don's abrupt departure, and quickly worked himself up into a minor fury over it. "Where the hell have you been?" he demanded as soon as Donatello appeared in view. "You know better than to just wander off like that, when we don't know where we are or what's going on – "

"We don't know _when_ we are, either," Don cut in smoothly. "I suspect that's going to be the more important question." The tight, closed expression hadn't changed while he was gone.

"And we don't know _when_ we are, either, especially since that tow-headed ditz has disappeared on us," Raph continued loudly, as if he'd meant to take the ass-chewing in that direction all along. "So we don't need to get separated, and we don't need you wandering around out there, getting yourself lost!"

"So Renet really is gone," Don said, almost to himself. He seemed to shrink a little at the idea.

"Yeah, she's really screwed us over this time," Raphael said bitterly. "And the last thing we need is for you to make it worse by getting yourself lost!"

"I didn't get lost, Raph," Don met his eyes at last. His jaw tightened. "I'm not an idiot. We needed some idea where we are – "

"We can get that idea together," Leo took over at last. "Don't do that again, Donatello. We can't take chances like that. It puts us all in danger."

Don looked away.

And it was so weird seeing him like that – Don never did anything to hold himself apart from the rest of them. Even his obsessive studying and tinkering happened right out in the open, where they could see and know whatever had captured his imagination. But right at that moment, Raphael could feel the isolation wrapping around his brother.

"Did you find anything?" Mike asked.

Don sighed. "There's a house – more of a hut, really – about a half-mile that way," he pointed. "There's food and water inside it. I can't tell anything from it; we could be in any time or place. Definitely no electricity or running water in the hut, though. When I was there, I could smell smoke coming from somewhere else. There was a trail leading away from the hut, but I came back here," his eyes flashed sullenly, "instead of checking it out."

"Any sign of humans?" Leo wasn't quite through with the lecture, Raph could tell – but it would wait for later.

"None. I found a couple of dead deer, but they don't appear to have been shot. They're just…dead. No other large animals that I could find," Don frowned, and his expression went thoughtful. "In fact…"

Raph hated it when he wandered off in the middle of a thought like that. "What?"

Don shook himself out of it. "Maybe it's nothing. It feels like winter, after all, so maybe that's the reason. But – it's weird that I didn't hear any birds, either."

Leonardo took charge of the situation. "We can't stay here. It's too exposed like this – let's get down there and see if we can find anything else."

"What about Renet?" Mike objected. "How'll she find us if we move out?"

"The same way she always finds us, Mike," Leo sighed. "With that damned scepter of hers."

....

The hut was just as Don had described it: primitive and deserted. While Leo and Mike kept watch, Raph and Don slipped inside and raided it for supplies. They found a tightly woven basket full of shriveled, but otherwise sound, apples; a loaf of what was probably once a good loaf of bread had gone rock-hard and stale in another basket nearby. A covered wooden bucket near the cold hearth held fresh water.

In one corner, they found a pair of large wool blankets tangled around each other. "Looks like someone was sleeping here, and left suddenly," Don murmured, assessing the blankets without touching them.

"They reek," Raph said bluntly. The whole hut, in fact, smelled strongly of unwashed bodies. There was another, even more unpleasant, smell underlying that, and he didn't want to think too much about what it might be. "Let's get out of here."

They took the basket of apples, and left the rest.

Leo surveyed the meager haul. "Well, I guess we're going to have to go scavenging," he decided. "It'll be dark soon – let's see if we can find wherever it is that the smoke is coming from. There's bound to be something there."

They fell into step without further discussion, spreading out through the woods just enough to keep each other in sight, and dropped into silent mode. They moved parallel to the trail, without actually getting on it – too much danger of being surprised that way.

Raphael looked forward to sunset. In the full dark, they'd be able to move more freely. It would be a lot easier to assess what they were up against then, and maybe make better plans. He admitted that planning wasn't necessarily his strength, but it would be good to have some idea what they needed to do. He paused to mentally curse Renet for not giving them any information at all before whisking them away –

To his left, Mike made a strangled noise.

It carried far enough to reach all three of them, and they hurried to intercept Michaelangelo, who was backing away from something. "Mike!"

He turned to meet them, his eyes wide. "Sorry. Sorry. Just…it's a dead guy. A _really_ dead guy." As he spoke, the smell wafted out to meet them.

Dead bodies were nothing new to them. Even bodies that had been dead for a while were not exactly a surprise – the tunnels under New York were full of strays of all types, and they often encountered the bloated corpse of a dog or cat. On very rare occasions, even a human would wander into the tunnels and die, though they hadn't actually found any of those unfortunates themselves. But this one was…appalling.

The stench was incredible, once they were all close enough to smell it. "Crap, that's worse than – " Raph covered his mouth and nose, not bothering to finish the sentence. And forget all warrior stoicism! The smell alone was enough to knock a person out if they got too close.

Leo took a deep breath through his hand and walked closer to the body. Raph reached out instinctively, trying to stop him, but Leo shrugged it off. He broke a dry branch off of a nearby tree and used it to poke at the corpse. _Looking for clues how he died,_ Raphael realized. _If we know how he died, it'll tell us what we're up against…_

The man lay sprawled against the base of a large oak tree. He wore a long, belted type of shirt that Raphael vaguely recalled from the art books that Splinter adored; he thought it was called a tunic. The man's legs were bare. He wore only a single boot.

"There's no marks of predation," Don said, clearly thinking out loud. "He's been here for a few days, at least, but there's no sign that anything has been at him, other than the bugs."

"I can't tell what killed him," Leo said tightly – trying not to breathe in, Raph judged. He poked at the man's torso more firmly.

The corpse lolled away from the tree at the gesture, the dead legs falling open as it did so. Raphael looked away. It seemed wrong to even accidentally look at someone so vulnerable and exposed –

Beside him, Donatello sucked in a deep, harsh breath. "Leo! Get away from him!" He darted in and grabbed their brother, dragging him forcibly away from the body. "Get away, get back!" He swung Leo around and shoved him into Mike and Raph. "Go, go!"

They fell back, unnerved by the sudden, raw panic in Don's face and voice.

"Just _go!_" he shouted, and pushed all three of them back the way they'd come.

They ran. Don fell in behind them, his limp coming back more pronounced than it had been back in New York.

The trail opened up in front of them. They crossed it and headed south, moving in the direction of the smoky smell without stopping. "What is it? What's wrong?" Mike called.

"It's – oh, gods, I can't believe she…" Don paused in his flight and looked back in the direction where they'd found the body. "She didn't…what was she thinking?"

They all stopped and joined him. Raphael saw that his hands were shaking. That scared him more than anything. "What is it?" he ground out, fear making his words harsher than even he intended.

Don's eyes were wild. "Did you see the marks in his groin?" he demanded. "The black lumps? Did you see?"

Raphael shook his head wordlessly. Some tiny bit of knowledge tickled in the back of his brain, something that also reminded him of Splinter's books about old Europe…something he wasn't sure he wanted to remember.

"I saw it," Leo confirmed, his voice low. "Is it…?

Don swallowed. "The plague," he whispered. "She's dropped us in the middle of an outbreak of the Black Death."


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

Michaelangelo watched his brothers carefully in the fading light. There was something ominous – almost scary – about the whole situation, but he was certain it would all be okay…_if_ his brothers would all calm down.

"So, the plague!" he began, while thinking, _Damn, when did Donnie develop such a dramatic streak?_ "It's carried by fleas, right? So we'll be okay – fleas don't bite reptiles."

Don swung around to fix him with a dark look. "Fleas don't bite _normal _reptiles, Mike. We don't exactly qualify."

"…especially Mike," Raphael muttered.

Michaelangelo let that go in favor of defusing the more immediate crisis. "We've never been bitten by fleas before!" he argued. He suddenly realized an effective way to both bolster his argument and get Raph back for his wisecrack. "We've never been bitten by _anything_ bug-like, except for that one time with the _leech_." He put a little extra weight on the last word, and was rewarded by seeing a tiny flinch, quickly suppressed, from Raphael. _Gotcha!_

"It's not a chance we can take, even so," Leo said quietly. "It's true we've never been flea-bitten before – "

" – as far as we know!" Don broke in. "It's not like any one of us can actually account for every little injury in our lives! We've not had any reason to be around a lot of flea-bearing mammals, remember? Even Klunk gets bathed too often for that! And at any rate, this is still not the real danger from the plague!" He paused something that sounded like it was shaping up to be a rant, and visibly collected himself. It was almost too dark to see the fierce look he gave each of them. "Bubonic plague doesn't spread just by flea bite. The most contagious version of the disease is actually spread when the victim coughs. It's especially deadly – the transmission rate is higher, the onset of symptoms in the new victim is much faster, and the mortality rate is at the high end of the scale. There are reports of healthy people getting coughed on by a dying victim, and the healthy person then died overnight – it's that quick."

"Who's gonna cough on us?" Raph scoffed.

Donatello tensed up so fast and so thoroughly that Mike could _feel_ it. He ground out, "It isn't. Just. Humans! Listen – do you hear anything moving in this forest? No, you don't! Because this plague affects virtually every warm-blooded species! The birds are dead, Raph. Birds! Not to mention the deer I found, the wolves that should have eaten the deer – and that man! – and any dogs, cats, cattle, or any other animals we might come across, so don't talk to me about how we won't run the risk of infection!" He didn't seem to even be aware that he was shouting. "There is a 20 to 80 percent mortality rate for every group that contracts it! I don't _know_ if we can get this disease, and I don't have a _clue_ how to help if one of us _does_ get it! Don't you _dare_ – "

"Don!" Leo rang out, whipcrack-sharp – his command voice. "Stop!"

Years of conditioning brought Donatello to an instant halt. He inhaled a deep breath in the silence. Even in the darkness, Mike could feel his glare.

"Now," Leo said more normally, "here's the situation as I understand it: we're in the middle of unknown territory, at an unknown point in history. We can't find our ride home. It's apparently winter, which means we'd have a tough time hunting and living off the land anyway. And that's just been made more complicated by the fact that we don't dare hunt any of the wildlife, for fear of contracting a disease we can't treat. There are humans around here _somewhere_, either dead or alive but potentially infected with plague, so we've got to exercise all the usual precautions to stay out of sight, plus we've got to be sure we don't risk getting close enough to get an infection even though they might not see us."

He paused, but clearly wasn't waiting for a response. More like, checking things off some kind of mental list, making sure he'd covered everything, Mike thought. "The most immediate problems are the most basic: we need food, clean water, and a safe place to sleep and stay hidden. We need to know more about the terrain." There was a whisper of cloth as he folded his arms. "Here's what we're gonna do…"

…

A crescent moon had risen by the time they reached the edge of the forest. The weak light and the cleared area meant that they could finally determine that they were in a broad, shallow valley. Hills rose to their left – east – while a mountain range formed the opposite edge of the valley. Mike eyed the snow-capped peaks and guessed their distance. More important, however, were the furrowed fields that spread out in front of the Turtles, rolling gently away from them toward a barely-visible shimmer that was probably a river.

Something was on fire down there. Orange light edged the straight edge of a long wall, and reflected off the surface of the water.

"Okay, remember the plan," Leo whispered.

"Check it out, grab something to eat, come back here," Mike recited, forcing some extra cheer into his voice. "Not that hard, Leo!"

"Aren't you forgetting something?" Leo asked in his driest tones.

Michaelangelo replayed the earlier conversation in his head. "Oh. Right. Look for any sign of Renet, too," he said sheepishly. _Whoops, that was embarrassing!_

"Wait," Raph grabbed his arm before he could step out of the concealing shadows. He plucked at the hem of Mike's winter camo. "This stuff is too bright – our shells'll be harder to spot than this."

Mike swallowed a groan as he realized Raphael was right – the mottled grey winter camouflage that worked so well in the city would stand out in a darkness made up of tilled fields. Moonlight would practically make it glow, giving them away to even casual glances. "Okay, so, we'll do this _au naturale_!" He skinned the poncho over his head and dropped it casually on the ground. The loose trousers followed shortly, and Mike checked his belt pouches to hide the urge to shiver in the cold breeze. Out in the open fields, it was going to be even colder!

Raphael stripped off his gear too, but more slowly and with a strangely thoughtful gaze fixed on Don. "Here," he thrust the poncho into their brother's chest. "Put this on."

Donatello looked vaguely affronted. "Raph – "

"Put it _on_!" Raphael insisted. "Your leg is bothering you, we can tell. Prob'ly your feet are, too, but you won't say. And the last thing we need right now is for you to get sick on us."

"Don't know how another layer is going to do anything about my knee," Don pushed the fabric away irritably.

Leo stepped in and took the poncho out of Raph's hand. "We'll take care of it," he said, aiming his words at Mike and Raph. "Just go, before the moon gets too high. Be back here before sunrise." He and Raphael exchanged a look, and then Leo turned away, presumably to deal with Donatello.

Mike and Raph flowed out into the open fields without another word between them.

…

The orange glow of the fire died down as they crept closer to its source – a small town, encircled with some kind of protective wall. The quarter-moon was just enough light for Mike to see the dubious look on his brother's face.

"'s not much of a wall," Raphael said, surveying the uneven top of the wall from the shadows at its base. He touched the rocks at the foot of it, and indicated the plastered wood that made up the rest of it. "Looks like it's been here a while, though."

"It can't be more than 30 feet high," Mike craned his head back to guess the height. "We could climb it, easy!"

"I'd be worried it'd fall down on us," Raph grumbled. But he dug in a pouch for his climbing claws anyway.

The wall was sturdier than it looked. _Sturdy enough to hold up under the weight of two mutant turtles, anyway,_ Michaelangelo reflected. They reached the top without any trouble, and peeked over the edge carefully.

The town, if it could even be called that, appeared to be made up of about a dozen houses built at the base of a small hill. Something vaguely castle-looking lurked at the top of the hill, but it was hard to make out any details in the dark. "Shouldn't there be torches or something?" Mike wondered quietly, indicating the bulk of the "castle" to Raph with a nod. "Every movie I've ever seen, there's always lights on at the castle."

"Yeah, 'cause movies are always true-to-life," Raphael probably rolled his eyes, to judge by the sound of his voice.

"Well, what's the point of having a castle, if there's nobody living in it?" Mike argued back. He checked the inside of the wall carefully – _nobody's looking!_ – and swung himself over the top. He shimmied down the wall even faster than he'd gone up, and resumed the idea in a whisper. "I mean, unless it's a ruined castle, and it's haunted. That would be cool. But if it's still in the center of town, it's gotta be lived in!"

"Hst!" Raphael clearly didn't want to talk about it. "Can it! You take left, I'll take right. Meet up back here in half an hour."

"But – " Mike realized he was talking to empty air. Raphael was gone.

_I don't think it would take half an hour for one of us to search the town, much less two of us,_ he thought doubtfully.

He stuck to the shadows inside the wall for as long as he could. But several of the houses were built into the wall itself, and he was forced to move out into the more open space. He kept his eyes open for any movement_. Let's see…if I were a paranoid villager living in the Dark Ages, where would I keep a stray blonde dressed in a stupid-looking hat and a cloak, and not much else? And where would I keep the food?_

The smoky smell turned out to be a blessing in disguise, Michaelangelo discovered, when he got too close to the open window of one of the houses. He sniffed experimentally, and recoiled at the smell coming from inside_. Eep! That's some serious stank – that's a potent combination of unwashed bodies, open sewage, and some rotten food. Maybe something else, too… _He thought about the dead body in the forest, and shuddered.

He moved away from the house and slunk back into the shadows of the wall, eyes on the houses in the center of the enclosure. Nothing really stood out as a likely place for Renet to be, and Mike was pretty sure that, wherever she was, the Timestress was drawing a crowd. Everything looked way too quiet to contain her.

Michaelangelo looked up the hill to his left, at the dark and silent building looming over the town…_Village,_ he corrected himself, _the best thing this could be called is a 'village'._

The more he thought about it, the more sense it made: if Renet was going to be anywhere nearby, it would have to be that castle-like structure. _If they found her, they'd take her to the local authorities, right? And those authorities would be in the castle, naturally!_ Convinced, he began to pick a path up the slope toward the high walls. As he moved from one shadow to another, he fought down a potentially-revealing grin. _After all, every castle needs a princess!_

As he got closer, he heard small sounds coming from the 'castle' that convinced him that he was right – _someone_ was living in those stone walls! He heard the voices chanting from somewhere up above.

Even better, though, was the scent that drifted down to him, almost too faintly to be smelled through the smoky smell. He paused in the shadow of a boulder to sniff appreciatively at it, just to be sure. "Bread!" he broke into a smile he couldn't hide.

Climbing claws got him up the steepest part of the slope and then up the stone walls. The sound of the voices got louder, of course, but Mike was more interested in the smell of the baking bread. He risked a glance over the wall at the distance he'd climbed, then crept along the deserted rampart, following the scent. _Leo did tell us to get something to eat,_ he reasoned. _And wherever that smell is coming from is the best lead I've had so far. _

The voices were now clear enough that Mike could make out the words. He tilted his head, trying to determine the direction of the sounds, even as he realized what he was hearing: "Oh Lord and Master of my life…"

_A monastery,_ Michaelangelo realized. _Not a castle, but a monastery._

Reminded, he paused and looked around for anything that might serve as a holding cell or prison for Renet. Nothing seemed likely, though. Like the village below, the monastery seemed too quiet and dark to contain her.

The voices came from below his feet. Mike craned his head carefully over the inside edge of the rampart, and made out the faint glow of lights from whatever structure lay underneath him. He couldn't see anyone. And the rest of the monastery was too dark to make out any details.

Satisfied that he was, himself, as invisible as the interior of the monastery, Mike resumed his search for the source of the delicious scent of fresh-baked bread. It wasn't long before he found it.

_This place is huge!_ he thought, eyes widening to take it all in.

A pair of massive tables stretched down the center of the room. Along the long wall opposite Mike's hiding place, two massive fireplaces were full of glowing coals. Between the two fireplaces, a man was peering into the depths of an ancient-looking oven.

Michaelangelo's mouth watered at the scent. The monk – and of course he had to be a monk, right, if he was dressed like that? – muttered and swayed, but didn't look away from his intent watch into the oven.

On the table behind the monk lay nearly three dozen steaming-hot loaves of bread.

It was easy to slide down into the dark shadows of the corners. Mike crept under one of the tables, eyes on the man's form, and crawled along its length.

Other than the fires, there were no lights in the kitchen at all. Mike took full advantage of the darkness, snatching a small basket from a shelf. He felt around inside it, decided that it held dried mushrooms – _at least, I hope those are mushrooms, and not dried-out bugs or something_ – and crept back toward his target.

He slid the three closest loaves off the table and into his basket – and then leaped for his hiding place.

Mike risked a glance back once he was safely out of sight again. The monk hadn't moved. _Score!_

He arrived back at the rendezvous point thrilled and breathless, and almost collided with Raphael. Beaming, he held out the basket to his brother, indicating his haul silently.

Raphael, far from looking pleased or even aware of the gloriously fresh bread being offered to him, lashed out and cracked Mike across the back of the head.

_Ow!_ Mike yanked the basket back in pure reflex, glaring at his brother. Raphael, for his part, turned abruptly to the wall and scrambled up it without a look back, leaving Mike to follow.

He waited until there were at least fifty yards between them and the village before venting his outrage. "What the hell was that for?" he hissed.

"You were late. I was worried," Raph said flatly. "We agreed: 30 minutes. You were gone more'n twice that, Mikey."

"At least I came back with food," Michaelangelo grumbled, subsiding slightly.

Raphael regarded him with a distantly superior look. "So did I, bonehead, an' I still managed to get back on time." He indicated a leather satchel-like bag slung across his chest.

Mike sighed. _Man, this is shaping up to be one long, long day!_

Leonardo came out of the tree line to meet them, and pointed them toward the low hills to the east. "Great job, guys. Come on – we found a place that might be safe to camp out for a while." He'd stripped off his winter camo, too. His face, in the moonlight, was just a tiny bit stiff and distant.

Mike looked around. "Where's Don?"

Leo hesitated, then said, "I left him there – he's not in any shape to be wandering around out here, now." He set off at a quick pace, not even pausing to look at the still-warm loaf of bread that Michaelangelo had pulled out of his basket as a trophy.

Raphael frowned. "What's wrong?" he called after Leo.

And a chill went down Mike's shell as it all fell into place. _It's true – something's wrong, something's gone wrong since we left._ Lightning-fast, all of the clues played through his head: _Leo didn't ask about Renet, he looks tense, he's in a big hurry, Donnie's not here, Leo said "he's not in any shape to be wandering around" instead of "his knee is bothering him" which I would've expected, oh gods what happened?_

Aloud he called after his brother's retreating back, in a high, breathless voice: "Leo?" He and Raphael hurried after him.

Leonardo slowed, but didn't stop. "We've got to get back. I don't want to leave Don alone."

"Why not?" Raphael demanded. The worry was clear under the irritated tones. "He's a big boy, and he can take care of himself."

Leo stopped, and swung around to look them in the eyes. "Not right now, he can't," he said. Even in the faint light from the moon, the lines of tension were clear on his face. He looked from Raphael to Michaelangelo and back, hesitating. Finally he said, "Don's…he's sick. Really sick…he's running a fever."


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

Leonardo brushed the back of his hand across Donatello's head, and was rewarded by the sight of his brother's eyes cracking open to regard him irritably in the dim light of the cave they found down near a tiny creek.

"Tol' you, 'm not that sick," Donatello said in tones that matched his expression.

Leo pretended to smile indulgently to cover his worry. "Yeah, you did. But maybe you should stay wrapped up for a little while, huh?" His brother's skin was sweaty and clammy.

Donatello considered it, his eyes fixed distantly on the narrow cave entrance. There was just enough moonlight coming in to see his expression as he worked out a response. "'m cold," he admitted. Then he frowned as something else occurred to him. "Where's Mike 'n Raph?"

"We're right here," Mike leaned into his sight line. "We got some stuff to eat, in the village. Are you hungry?" He dipped a hand into the basket he'd stolen, and came back with a chunk of bread.

"No," Don turned his face into the folds of the poncho. "'s too bright in here. Can't eat when it's too bright…"

"Just stay back, Mike," Leo murmured, warding off Michaelangelo's reflexive move to check on Don. "He's probably contagious, and we don't need to all come down with it."

"But you're – !" something clicked in Mike's throat as he swallowed his protest. He straightened, and looked away helplessly.

"I've probably already been exposed, if he actually is contagious," Leo confirmed. He sat down next to the twisted lump of fabric that shrouded their brother. "I don't want you two to catch it, too, if there's any way to avoid that. The last thing we need is for all four of us to get sick."

"No, the last thing we need is for _any_ of us to get sick!" Raphael broke in. He pushed past Mike to stare intently at Donatello's curled form. "How the hell can he be sick, anyway? We weren't close enough to anything that coulda made him sick!"

"That dead guy – "

"Leo was closer to him than Donnie was," Raph overrode Mike's idea. "If anybody's gonna be sick right now, it oughtta be Leo."

"You _want _me to be sick?" Leo questioned, unable to stop the irritation from seeping into his tone. "Because I have to tell you, Raph, I'd rather it was me than Don, too. And if I could take this away from him, I would – "

"You guys're too loud," Don pulled himself free of the covering fabric just enough to announce querulously. His eyes squinted tightly shut as he aimed his words in Raphael's direction. "Go argue so'where else, Raphie."

"Yeah. Right. Somewhere else," Raphael threw up his hands and stalked toward the cave entrance. "Story of my life."

"Where are you going?" Leo called after him. His hand moved automatically to soothe Don's creaky noise of protest at the volume of his voice. He patted the fabric in the general area where Don's shoulder must've been.

Raphael pulled the satchel over his head and tossed it behind him just before he disappeared from the cave. "You heard 'im – I'm going 'somewhere else'!"

"Raph!" but of course, it didn't do any good to call him back. It never did. Sighing, Leo turned his attention back to the sick Turtle by his side, and told him, "I wanted to keep him away from you, but that's not quite what I had in mind."

Donatello mumbled something into the poncho.

Mike folded himself onto the floor. His eyes were troubled. "If Don got sick, what're the chances that we're all gonna get sick anyway?"

"I don't know." It was only one of the many, many reasons that Leo hated knowing that Don, out of all of them, was sick. Don could've calculated the odds, determined the best treatment for the symptoms, maybe even known the best way to prevent everyone else from coming down with it. But with Don out of action, none of that was going to happen. All that Leo could do was keep his brother warm and still and hidden, and hope that the illness would run its course. He was determined to ignore the memory of Donatello saying, _"…a 20 to 80 percent mortality rate…"_ Instead, he looked Mike in the eye calmly, and said, "Why don't you see about starting a fire for us?"

A small fire was all they could risk. Mike placed it behind a boulder that would shield it from any casual eyes, if someone were to stumble on their hiding place, while Leo tried to coax Don into eating something. But their sick brother refused to eat. "No meat," he moaned, pushing away the offered piece of bread.

"Donnie, it's just bread," Leo repeated patiently.

Donatello turned his face away, mumbling gibberish.

Leonardo put the piece of bread back in the basket. He took a deep breath and kept his face calm with an effort – he couldn't show how worried he was, not in front of his brothers, not in a field-situation. There wasn't anything any of them could do. But the last thing any of them needed was panic. "What did Raph bring back?" he asked Michaelangelo evenly. "Maybe it's something Don will eat."

"Not if he's running a fever bad enough to think that bread is meat…" Mike muttered skeptically as he inspected the satchel. He shook his head as he pawed through the contents. "Sausages. Figures – that's the way our luck's been going tonight."

"It's morning now," Leo pointed out. "Been a long time since you got any sleep, Mike. Why don't you catch some z's and I'll keep watch for a while?"

Reminded, Mike yawned hugely. " 'kay. Wake me up when you want me to take my shift…"

Left alone with his thoughts and his drowsing brothers, Leonardo turned to the light meditative state that was as much as he dared – he was tired, too, and the mental exercise helped to keep him awake. As much as he tried to clear his mind, though, Leo's thoughts kept circling back to the same three concerns: Raphael's absence, Donatello's illness, and Renet's disappearance. He could do nothing about any of those things, it seemed, yet the thoughts wouldn't leave his mind.

He gave up when it became clear that meditation wasn't going to work, and slipped out of the cave and down the creek. He filled his hands in the sparkling water, lifted them to his mouth…and then hesitated. _Is this a good idea?_ He regarded the double handful of water dubiously. Then he shrugged_. Not like we have any other options,_ he told himself fatalistically, and drank. The water was ice-cold.

***

When he couldn't keep his eyes open any longer, Leo woke Mike up, then dropped off to sleep. He had intended to sleep next to Don, so he would know if anything changed, but his brother's fevered sleep meant that he was restless and prone to thrashing. Leonardo couldn't do anything to help, and had to trust that Michaelangelo would keep Don from rolling into the fire.

He slept badly, as he always did in strange places, and woke up near sunset, still groggy and tired. "No sign of Raph?" he asked while he stretched the kinks out of his neck.

"Nope," Mike confirmed around a mouthful of apple. He scrutinized something on the dirt floor of the cave, and set the apple core down with a flourish. "Ah-ha! Tic-tac-toe!"

Leo ran a hand across Donatello's cheek and forehead – the only parts of him that were visible outside the fabric – and wondered if it was just wishful thinking that made it seem like the fever had gone down. "Did he wake up?"

"Nope," Mike repeated. He swept the apple cores off to one side and re-drew the grid with one finger.

Leonardo wandered out again to reorient himself to the time and place where he'd found himself. He found himself down by the creek, studying the greenery to see if any of it would be safe to use to transport some water back up to the cave for Don. _It would help if I had any idea where we are,_ he thought. _If I knew that, I could develop a better strategy for living off the land._ He felt the wave of bitterness come over him – bitterness at Renet, bitterness at being dumped into a strange land and a strange time, bitterness over the needless risks that faced his family – and held his breath, waiting for the feeling to pass. It wouldn't do anyone any good to give in to that feeling. He'd tried to tell that to Raph once, but as usual, his brother would have to learn that on his own.

Dissatisfied with the possibilities around him, Leo resolved to make another raid into the village as soon as it got fully dark. They needed a few more things, like containers for water, if they were going to be stuck for any length of time. _Once we get home, I'll see about adding some kind of collapsible canteens to our usual gear,_ he vowed. It felt like a failure to have not thought of that before, especially considering how often they'd been pulled away from home by random forces. He wondered what else they should always remember to carry on them, and decided to take that up with Splinter at the first available opportunity.

He went back to the cave. It would still be another few hours before they dared make the trek to the village.

Michaelangelo was still busily sketching something into the dirt floor of the cave with one finger. "Wanna play checkers, Leo?" he asked brightly.

"You had time to carve up a set of checkers?" Leo wondered briefly as he stepped past Mike to sink down next to Donatello again.

"Not exactly. Found some white rocks, and some red rocks. It'll do, for now," Mike looked up from his sketch. His face brightened. "Hey, Donnie! Feeling better?"

Leonardo looked down in surprise. Donatello's eyes were open, at least. "Otouto?"

"Hmm?" Don rubbed his face with one fist. "Wha' happened?"

"Dude! What's under your jaw?" Michaelangelo abandoned his game and crawled closer.

"Stay back, Mikey," Leo warned. He tipped Don's head back gently, exposing his throat to the weak red light from the fire. Dark, swollen lumps decorated Don's neck just below the hinge of his jaw, one on each side. Leo tamped down the thrill of fear that went through him at the sight. "Well," he said tightly, letting go of Don's head at the same moment, "I guess that means it really is the plague."

Don felt at his own neck gently, wincing as he brushed across the swelling. "Ow. That's…that's interesting," he said weakly. He panted and let his hand fall away. His eyes darted between his brothers. "Where's…Raph?"

"He went for a walk," Leo said quickly. He threw a warning glance at Mike. "He'll be back in a little bit. Can you drink something?"

"Maybe," Don struggled against the ponchos that covered him. " 'm hot…" He sat up, leaning heavily on Leo the whole way. "Hang on…gotta check…see if it's…here, too," he pushed the concealing fabric away from his lap. His head fell forward, briefly.

Leonardo didn't need to look to see for himself. Don's stillness, and Mike's wide eyes, told him more than he needed to know – the dark swellings were there on Don, the way they had been on the dead man in the forest.

"Well…that's something…I didn't know…" Don panted. He turned his head carefully to look at Leo. "Never been able to tell….exactly how much we're like….humans, and I guess…this is one way…turtles don't have these, these, um, glands. The ones that're…swollen, I mean."

"Turtles don't get the plague, either," Leo said tightly.

"No," Don agreed. He moved slowly, pulling his legs up under him and climbing to his feet with an effort. He had to hang on to Leo to stay that way, though. "Stay back…Mikey."

Leonardo felt a certain measure of relief at Don's words. If his brother could think clearly enough to recognize the danger of infection, then he was better, in some ways, than he had been that morning. "Come with me."

Don sagged to his knees next to the creek. He put his head down and breathed deeply for a few minutes. "Feels like I'm…gonna pass out…" he told Leo gravely. "Be careful, okay?"

And then he coughed. Deep, wracking, wet coughs that sounded like they hurt all the way into his core. He doubled over with the force of them, one hand digging into the soft dirt by the creek and the other hand pressed to his chest. Leo didn't know what to do, and finally settled for simply pressing a hand to the arch of his brother's shell to steady and reassure him while the fit went on.

When it was finally over, Don was so weak he almost fell head-first into the creek. Leo hauled him up, supported his weight, washed his face and coaxed a couple of handfuls of water into his mouth.

"Sorry, sorry," Don muttered. "Sorry, Leo…"

"Shh," Leo pulled him back to his feet. "Nothing to be sorry about, otouto. Come on. That's it, one foot in front of the other…"

Michelangelo was on his feet, the dirt checkerboard scuffed into oblivion, by the time they got back to the cave. He watched, tense and wide-eyed, while Donatello practically fell into the nest of fabric and dropped into another deep sleep. "I'm gonna go look for Raph," he blurted.

Leo sighed. Raph really had been gone too long in this unknown place, and he itched to go out looking for his wayward brother himself. He knew Mike felt it, too – he needed the movement and the action to counter the helplessness of waiting around._ But…there's every chance I've already been infected, too,_ he thought in despair_, so it doesn't make any sense for me to go tramping around in the unknown when I could get as sick as Don any second now._ "Just be back by midnight, okay?"

Mike gave him a short nod and disappeared into the dark.

Leonardo pulled the ponchos up around Don again. There wasn't any point in even trying to meditate now. He didn't even need to try it to know that his thoughts would refuse to be calmed. He fidgeted with the rocks by his feet, listened to Don breathe, and tossed more twigs on the fire. _What am I gonna do if Mike isn't back by midnight? What if he can't find Raph? Where the hell is Renet?_ He frowned fiercely at the coals for a second, then turned away to let his eyes adjust to the darkness.

Leo's internal clock was too precise to let him fool himself that Mike had been gone for very long, when he heard someone rushing toward the cave. He tensed, and drew one sword. Feet crunched through the gravel and leaves outside.

Michelangelo burst into the cave. "Leo! I found Raph!"

"Not really ninja of you, Mikey," Leo snapped in pure reflex. "Where is he?"

"He's right behind me," Mike threw more wood on the fire. "Leo – he's not alone!"


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

_Hours earlier…_

Raphael headed away from the cave at a jog, seething just enough to give him the drive to keep up his speed. _Stupid Donatello. We get hauled all over time and creation, and what does he do? Gets sick._

A little, nagging voice trailed after him, reminding him that Don had said something about 'mortality rates'. But Raph didn't want to hear it. He circled around the base of the hill in which his brothers were hiding, and put on more speed, heading north. He clenched his hands into fists as he ran, hard enough to silence the nagging voice.

_Gotta find Renet. Gotta get out of here._

The thick layers of dead leaves muffled his footsteps. He knew he should go back to the cave where his brothers waited – it was bad enough when he ran off while they were at home, but to run off while they were in an uncertain situation, well, that's exactly what he'd chewed Don out for just a few hours earlier, right?

_Crap. I'm tryin' so hard here, and I keep screwing up anyway. _It wasn't that he wanted to lead the team or anything, but ever since summer, Raphael had been working on being more of a "team player." His old go-it-alone habits seemed sort of wrong in the wake of what Don had been through when he was _actually _alone, and Raph wanted to be around to be a part of things. _I want to be around when they need me, damn it, so why am I running away from them?_

He kept on running anyway.

It took a long time to calm down enough to think about going back. And by then Raphael had passed the nasty hut they had scouted on their way to…wherever the hell they were. It occurred to him that he should check out the original cave where they'd woken up. Maybe Renet had finally shown up?

Climbing the hill was a lot harder than it should have been. Raphael felt exhaustion dragging at his bones, weighing him down.

Renet wasn't waiting in the cave, as he'd hoped.

Raphael slumped down just inside the cave entrance, too tired to even be as angry as he wanted to be. He was furious with the Timestress, but couldn't summon the energy to do anything about it. His neck ached – a reminder that he was well overdue for both sleep and food – and he rubbed at it slowly while looking out over the forest below. _I should get back,_ he thought moodily. _This isn't helping anyone…_

A tendril of smoke rose up out of the trees to the north. Raph tracked it tiredly. The sweat of his exertions dried on him, and he shivered in the cold air. He wondered if it would be warmer if he went deeper into the cave. While he thought about it, his eyelids drooped.

Another tendril of smoke curled up into the sky.

_Wait…_

Raphael scrubbed at his eyes and scrambled up into a crouch. "What the…?" he breathed. All of the sleepiness fell away from him. Another tendril of smoke climbed up from the trees.

It was easier to get down the hill from the cave than it had been to get up. Raphael took cover in the forest, and made his way silently in the direction where he'd seen the smoke. It was further away than it seemed, from the hill – he'd thought that it was only a mile or so away, but it felt like he covered more than three miles by the time he started to see signs of life. Or more specifically: to _hear_ signs of life. Long before it came in sight, Raph could hear the sounds of a large group of people going about the regular tasks of life. He heard wood being chopped, people speaking with casually raised voices, the flapping of flags, and other sounds that he finally identified: _It's a camp. A big camp, lots of people._

He dropped even further into stealth mode, and crept closer. Whoever they were, they weren't interested in keeping their presence a secret, that was for sure! He couldn't take the chance that he might run into someone from their camp out in the trees. All his senses came to high alert. Every stray breeze or rustle through the winter-dried leaves of the trees registered on his skin before he heard it with his ears. He moved almost at a crawl, intent on keeping his own cover, as he slipped silently through the trees and undergrowth to get a glimpse of the possible threat.

It was a strange thought – Raphael let that filter through his mind as he eased out of the tangled roots of an old tree and sought cover in the low-hanging branches of another. _Why are they a threat, instead of a resource? Why are they any different from the people in the village?_

He finally caught sight of the first human figures from the camp, and retreated even further up into the canopy of the trees to study them.

There was a certain order to the camp in front of him. And that was a good thing, because it was a lot bigger than he had realized that it would be. The tents themselves were a mismatched set, all different sizes, shapes, and types. The people, too, seemed like a mixed group – lots of different skin colors, clothing types, weapons…

_Weapons!_

Something clicked in Raphael's head as he looked at the weapons and the casual ease with which they were handled. _These guys are fighters. Not an army, not exactly…mercenaries? _

He eased up onto another branch. There were women and children in the camp, too – Raph could see them scurrying between the tents. Some of the women wore bright colors, and had silver or gold jewelry. These women laughed and teased and taunted the men who came near; every now and then a woman would disappear into a tent with a man in tow. "Hookers," Raph breathed.

The other women looked a bit more down-trodden. They kept their heads down, flinched whenever anyone came near, tried to be invisible…

A sudden commotion at the edge of camp closest to Raph drew his attention. He looked down through the trees in time to see a man stumble away from a tent with a girl – a little girl – flung over his shoulder. Another man came out of the tent, hands raised in a pleading gesture. The first man, the one with the girl, made a rude gesture and strode off toward the treeline. His angry words drifted up from the general din of the camp, growing louder as he came closer to Raphael's hiding place.

"…belongs to me, damn…do as I please…old enough to bleed…"

The little girl hung limply over his shoulder. Raph wasn't even sure she was conscious. Something about the whole scene rubbed him the wrong way, and he abandoned his survey of the campsite to swing down out of the trees and make a trail toward the man and the girl.

"You belong to me," the man was snarling when Raph reached the relative safety of a tree branch over their heads. "Do what I want with my own property, girl, and I don't care if those bastards are too squeamish to hang around and watch." He set the little girl on her feet – she stood as passively as she'd been when he carried her – and hooked his hand into the neck of her tunic shabby tunic, and yanked downward. The cloth ripped open easily.

The man fumbled with his own tunic and the loose trousers underneath.

Raphael felt the rush of fury in his blood as he realized what he was witnessing. "Rapist!" he hissed, totally unconcerned with secrecy.

The man looked up, shocked.

Raphael dove onto the man, knocking him away from the child. "Bastard!" It wasn't something that called for subtlety or finesse – abandoning all his training, he curled his fist and drove it, again and again, into the man's face. "Disgusting, filthy scumbag, rapist!" he spit the words out, unable to even adequately put his fury into either words or actions. He brought his other hand up into a fist, raining blows down, pulping the man's face.

The man spit bubbles of blood through the ruins of his teeth.

Raph jumped up, revolted by the close contact with the man. He kicked him, hard, in the side, and felt ribs give under his foot. He shook with the adrenaline rush of anger – Raphael hated rapists more than any other type of criminal. Other crimes at least made sense to him. They might make him furious or sick, but at least thieves, murderers, and even drug-dealers made sense to him. Their crimes had a purpose. Rapists, though – there was nothing to be gained. There was no way the crime could ever be justified. A thief might steal to keep his family fed, a murderer might kill to keep someone else safe – or even for a paycheck! – but there was no justification for rape, ever! Another kick, and the man was curled up and wheezing through the bloody bubbles.

Out of the corner of his eye, Raphael saw the little girl was still standing against the tree where she'd been left. Her torn tunic hung open. She made no move to run away, or even to cover herself. "G'wan, kid, get out of here!" Raphael waved one hand at her. "Get back to camp, go back to your mom."

It was a shock when she spoke. "Mama's dead," she said in a high, clear voice. "The men set fire to everything, and took me away from Mama after they…" her eyes fell on the curled form in front of her. She swallowed and finished in a softer voice, "…she died while they did it."

Oh, gods. Raphael felt the bile rise up in his throat to go along with the fury.

He bent, grabbed the man's head, and twisted.

Later, after he'd stuffed the body under a fallen tree, he regarded the girl. She looked around the clearing with dull, incurious eyes under a tangled mass of unkempt hair, but she didn't look directly at Raph. "What am I gonna do with you?" he wondered out loud.

Her tunic still gaped open. Raphael frowned, and pulled the torn edges together. "I can't send you back to that camp. Nobody there would take care of you at all." The tunic fell open again when he let go of it. She was so tiny and unprotected under it! He glanced around for something he could use as a belt, and felt the slide of red fabric over his shoulder. "Hold your, er, dress together, okay? Lemme fix that…" He slid the red mask off and unknotted it, then wrapped it three times around her waist before tying a new knot in it. "There. Now we'll see about getting you someplace safe."

Her fingers touched the red fabric lightly, almost like she was frightened. And then she looked up at Raphael, meeting his eyes for the first time. "It's beautiful," she said in her high voice.

Raphael examined the red fabric against the grubby fabric of her torn tunic. "Okay, sure, kid, whatever you say. Let's put some space between us and them, whaddaya say?"

She couldn't keep up with his pace, and he felt too creeped out by what he'd seen and almost seen that he couldn't stand to slow his pace to hers. So he picked her up and carried her. She lay limply against his shoulder, not resisting him but not interested in where they were going, either. The sun set while he walked.

Exhaustion dragged at him. To keep himself awake, he asked her questions when they were far enough away that he no longer feared pursuit. "So, kid, what's your name?"

She examined her fingers. "Mari," she said finally.

"How old are you?"

Mari only looked up at him through her tangled hair.

_Well, that's no help._ He snuck glances at her in the faint starlight. She was older than Shadow, that was all he was certain of. _Maybe five or six years old? And scrawny for that…_

She wasn't much of a distraction from his exhaustion. His feet dragged more and more, the further he got from the camp…and the closer that he got to his brothers. Dread weighed him down as much as the lack of sleep. _Hope Donnie's okay…hope they're all okay…_

It took him a lot longer to get back than it did to get away. It was almost midnight, judging by the stars, when he finally got to the foot of the hill that hid the cave where he'd left his brothers hours earlier.

Mari might've been dozing on his shoulder. He couldn't be sure, since he felt like he was dozing himself, while he walked. Raph couldn't remember the last time he'd gotten any sleep, and he kept himself awake for a while by inventing new curses to hurl at Renet, for keeping him away from his bed.

He was so tired that he didn't realize that he was walking into a trap.

"Boo!" Michaelangelo popped up right next to him. "Good thing I'm not a Foot nin- what's that?"

"I dunno," Raph was too tired to even explain himself. " 's a girl. Don't you have eyes?" He kept taking one step after another, promising himself that as soon as he stopped, he could fall asleep.

"Raph – ?" Mike tried to grab his arm, to make him stop.

"Don't! Gotta get back…see how Donnie's doing," he heard himself slurring the words.

"Right," Mike swallowed audibly. "Gotta get back…Leo's gonna have kittens when he sees you brought company."

_Don't care,_ Raphael thought. He couldn't summon the energy to put it into words.

Mike patted him on the arm and stopped trying to get him to stop. "Tell you what – I'll go ahead and warn Leo, so he can get the worst of it out of his system before you get there, okay?"

Raph nodded. Or at least, he thought he did. It was hard to be sure. But Mike was gone just as suddenly as he appeared, so he must've gotten his message across somehow.

It was kinda hazy after that. He staggered into the cave at last, and collapsed next the to file. "Yell at me later, Leo," he slurred. "Can't…can't hear it…ri'now."

And then he finally felt safe enough to fall asleep.


	6. Chapter 6

_Well, it's a short chapter, but it needs to be posted. Much love and thanks to everyone who has commented so far -- it means a lot!_

**Chapter 6**

Michaelangelo could count on all six fingers the number of times, since they were fifteen, that he'd seen Leo come close to losing his cool. _Looks like I'm gonna need to start counting on my toes, too,_ he thought as he watched Leonardo rocket to his feet just as Raphael curled up and dropped into a boneless sleep.

"What do you mean, you – !" Leo cut himself off, eyes widening in disbelief as the small girl Raph carried into the cave muttered in her sleep and rearranged herself under the sleeping Turtle's arm. "Who the _hell?!"_

"It's a little girl," Mike said helpfully.

"I can tell that," Leo snapped. He stalked over and glared down at the sleeping pair. "Where did she come from, and why is she here?"

Mike shrugged, smiling. Whatever the answers might be, he guessed they were more interesting than anything that had happened in the last two days!

"What does he think he's doing, bringing a child into our hiding place?" Leo's voice climbed upward. "Where the hell has he been, and what did he do that he's carrying small children around?!"

"Just one child, as far as I can tell," Mike couldn't keep the irrational cheer out of his voice. "She's pretty small, though – maybe he's got another one tucked under his belt somewhere?" He peered ostentatiously at his brother's gear, pretending to check for stray children.

Leo breathed in a deep, tightly controlled inhalation, closing his eyes and pressing his mouth so firmly shut that it looked like a scar.

"Or maybe he's using another one as a pillow? Hey, where are you going?" he called as Leo turned and stalked out of the firelight, toward the mouth of the cave.

"Out," Leo tossed back over his shoulder without pausing.

"Okay, but if you're gonna bring back any kids, maybe you should get a boy, so we have a set!" Michaelangelo sang out. "Like twins!" Laughing to himself, he turned back to look at the sleeping child. He felt light-headed, and not just from the relief of having Raphael back and seemingly safe. No, if he was honest with himself, Mike had to admit that he was feeling giddy emotional highs mostly because he didn't know what else to do with the unbearable situation.

_Donnie's sick,_ he thought, glancing across the fire at the lump of fabric. _Renet's gone. We can't get home, and we don't know what we're supposed to do here] _Really, what else could he do but look for something funny in it?

It got really lonely after Leonardo took off, though. Mike sat outside, looking up at the stars, to keep his eyes and his mind sharp. He shivered in the cold breeze that blew down the hill.

It was the sound of coughing that drew him back into the cave. "Don?"

Donatello knelt in the nest of fabric, bent over and coughing – it sounded painful. He gagged and fell forward over his own knees.

Mike rushed over to him without thinking. "Easy, bro, I gotcha – "

"No!" Don pushed him away. "I might…might…" he panted, looking around the cave, "…make you sick?" His eyes fell on Raphael. "What…happen'da…?"

"Doesn't matter," he itched to pull the ponchos up around Don, who was shivering. "Don't worry about it, go back to sleep." If Don went back to sleep, he'd be okay, right?

His brother didn't seem inclined to follow the order, though. He turned wide, watery eyes to Mike. "Is that a…person?" he jerked his head toward Raphael's sleeping form.

"Yeah, but it's no big deal," he inched closer. "Just a kid, not a problem. Raph brought her back from his walk."

"Oh." Donatello appeared to think about this for a long, slow minute, in which he didn't notice that Mike was close enough to drape one of the ponchos around his shoulders. "So…why?"

"You always gotta ask the hard questions, doncha?" Mike smiled.

"S'not a hard one," Don said indignantly. "Simple. Kid. With Raph. Why?"

"I dunno," Mike laid his hand across Don's forehead and then his neck. "Hey, I think your fever's gone! And those things on your neck," he tipped Don's head back just enough to catch some light, "those're mostly gone, too."

Don nodded. "S'good, right?"

_Yeah, but this new sense of stupid you've developed kinda worries me more,_ Mike thought. He kept it to himself. "Let's go get you something to drink."

"Okay, I…wait." Don turned his confused, foggy gaze to the rest of the cave. "Where's Leo?"

"Went for a walk," Mike shrugged.

Don blinked at him. "Is he gonna bring back 'nother kid?"

And then he looked vaguely offended at Mike's whoop of laughter.

…

They sat outside the cave and watched the stars move. Michelangelo happily put his camouflage poncho and trousers back on, once Don insisted that he didn't need them. "So it's been two days?" Donatello asked in disbelief. His words puffed into smoke in the icy air.

"Yep," Mike nodded. "You've been pretty out of it."

"That doesn't make any sense at all," Don frowned and felt carefully at the hinges of his own jaw. "Does the plague run its course that fast? And none of you have any symptoms, right?"

"Nope, not one black bulgy growth anywhere," he spread out his arms and waved vaguely down the length of his body. "No fevers, no coughs, no delirium."

"Weird…" Don gave up on the remnants of the swellings, and tucked his hands back into the poncho. "I feel fine now, so something's not right with this."

"You've always gotta look for the dark cloud around that silver lining, doncha?" he glanced over his shoulder at Raph, and thought about adding more wood to the fire. Not for Raphael's sake, but for the girl. "At least you're acting normal now – not like somebody took out half your brain. Well, in your case, more like nine-tenths of your brain," he allowed.

Donatello frowned again. "Wait, I remember that. It was just like..." he paused to think about it, and continued more slowly, "…just like Raph did, when he woke up back where Renet dumped us."

"Raphie was as out of it as you? I wish I'd seen that," Mike grinned up at the stars.

"Wasn't as much fun as you'd think," Don hunched up more tightly. "How long has Leo been gone?"

Now _there _was the one thing that Mike couldn't easily get any amusement out of, no matter how much he tried. "Couple of hours. Hope he's okay…"

Don looked at him, started to say something, and then paused before saying: "He's okay. Nothing here can get the better of Leo."

Mike agreed, silently. And did his best to smother the tiny bit of worry that wormed its way into his heart in spite of himself.


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7**

Leonardo heard the child crying before he made it over the palisade wall.

He wasn't good with guessing human ages, especially for children, but time spent with Shadow led him to think that the child was somewhere between one and two years old. Old enough to be walking, but too young to be trained out of the saggy cloth diaper he was wearing. i_Certainly too young to be out in this cold, wearing only that diaper,_ /iLeonardo thought grimly.

Crouching in the shadows of a hut that stank of human bodies and waste, Leo studied the baby. He couldn't believe that anyone would allow a child that young to roam around freely at all, much less allow him – her? – to do so without warm clothes. But no matter how closely he looked, or how much he didn't want to believe it, the child was clearly wearing a badly stained diaper, and nothing else.

His mind went back to the body in the forest. i_Parents are probably dead_, /ihe realized with a chill that had nothing to do with the weather. i_If there's no one around to take care of him, he's not going to last much longer, either./i_

In fact, while Leonardo watched, the child fell down on the ground next to the burnt remains of a house, and began to wail even more loudly… but not for long. He simply didn't have the strength left to cry for long, and tapered off into silent, open-mouthed sobbing. He began to shiver.

_iAncestors, I hope it's quick_,/i Leonardo mourned. i_He's got no one left to take care of him, please don't prolong his suffering!/i _His own hands twitched. He fought down the instinct to grab the child up and try to warm him. It wasn't right, to stretch out the baby's life by saving it now, only to have him die of neglect when Leonardo and his brothers found Renet and got out of there – it would be far kinder to simply end his suffering, and not leave him to die of exposure.

He thought of the razor-sharp edges of the weapons he carried.

He watched the child curl up on the ground, in the cold ashes of the burned house, and wail his grief into the dirt.

Leonardo bit his lip. And then he moved toward the child, not knowing which would be the kinder course of action.

Without his conscious thought, his hands went out and plucked the baby up off the ground. "Shh, shh," he soothed automatically, tucking the tiny, chilled fingers and toes up against the scant warmth of his plastron. The baby looked up at him. He – and Leonardo glanced inside the stained diaper for one second and confirmed that it was a boy – was so tired that he was reduced to deep shudders and a, "Huhh, huhh," sound as he fought for breath and strength.

"Shh," Leonardo said again, rubbing the tiny legs and arms. "Let's see if you can find someplace better to sleep, hm?" He glanced around at the houses – huts, really, to his eyes – and wondered where to deposit his tiny passenger_. iOne place is as good as any other, I guess,/i_ he shrugged.

The closest house was only a few yards away from the burned-out wreckage, and Leonardo decided that was good enough. He stepped in that direction, still rubbing the circulation back into the chilled limbs.

"That's my brother," a small voice said behind him.

Leonardo froze, and cursed himself in the same instant. _How did I let my guard down like that?!_ He turned his head, slowly, fearing a scream or even a blow from a weapon at any moment, to go along with the unexpected voice.

A small girl stood in the doorway of the hut where Leonardo had been hiding a few minutes earlier. Her eyes were dull, and her cheeks hollow, as she went on looking expressionlessly at the Turtle. The ankle-length tunic that she wore had stains that were visible even in the bare moonlight.

"Um," Leonardo changed course, and carried the baby back to his sister. "He's cold. He needs to be someplace warm," and he loosened his grip so that she could take the baby from him.

But she went on staring dully at him. "I can't." She made no move to take the baby.

"You have to. He's your brother," Leonardo offered the child again. "He needs someone to take care of him."

"I can't," her eyes shifted away from him. "I can't take care of him. I don't know… I don't know how!"

Frowning, Leonardo tucked the baby close again, and studied the girl. He couldn't be sure of her age, but guessed that she was somewhere between five and seven years old. And she was dirty, and hollow-cheeked, and her eyes were sunken in her face. i_She's too young to take care of herself, much less a baby,_/i he realized. Aloud he said, gently, "Do you have any grown-ups who can take care of him?" i_And you_,/i he added silently.

It was hard to tell in the faint light, but it looked like she might cry. "Can't you take him away, and take care of him?" She met his eyes. "I thought… maybe you can take him back to the forest with you, and he can be your baby? Like in the stories?"

Leonardo was momentarily indignant at the thought that the girl had mistaken him for an ioni,/i a malevolent spirit. Then he took a closer look at her, and decided that she was thinking of something else, something more akin to the changeling stories out of European fairy tales. "I was just looking for a place he could be warm," he told her. "He'll get sick out here – "

"He'll die," she said flatly. "Like Mama, and Papa, and Katrine, and ev'body else."

Her rigid grief and fear wrenched at Leonardo's heart, but he held tight to his own mission. "He just needs to go to a grown up," he pitched his voice as soothing as he could. "Can you take him to a grown up?" Again, he offered the baby to her. The boy squeaked and snuffled his distress at being moved away from the hard shelter and faint warmth of Leo's plastron. He was too weak to do much more than that, though, and Leo looked at him in alarm.

"There aren't any," she said solemnly. "They all died." She looked past him to the burned house. "Benni, he put ev'body in there when they died, and he burned it. We told him not to, but he did. And he burned it."

"Okay," Leonardo said carefully, "where is Benni? Maybe he can take care of a baby?" He checked his own internal sense of time, and realized he had already spent far longer talking to the girl than he had meant to spend in the village at all. _I've got to get back to my brothers! _He looked up at the moon, slowly dipping toward the horizon, and calculated the time he'd been gone. Worry for his brothers, especially for Donatello, made him try to harden his heart against the desperate children in front of him.

"Benni can't take care of a baby," she stated sadly. "He's a boy."

"Benni can take care of this baby," Leo said firmly. "Take the baby – wait," something caught his ear.

The creak of leather…

He breathed deep, tapping into and expanding his senses outward. Years of training to work in all conditions served him well, and he no longer felt the damp huddle of the baby against his plastron, or smelled the rank air that surrounded the little hut where the children lived. Instead, he was suddenly aware of things further away, things on the other side of the palisade wall.

Things like men with swords, creeping up to the tattered wood of the palisade itself.

"Damn it!" Leonardo shoved the baby at his sister. "Take him! I have to get out of here!"

But she put her hands behind her and backed away from him, eyes going wide with a sudden spike of fear. "I can't!" she shouted.

The baby squealed weakly.

Leo felt the moment when the silent invaders began to swarm up the palisade wall. Leather and steel thumped against the wooden walls. He ground his teeth, shoving panic down with an effort, and glanced up the hill at the dark and silent bulk of the castle. i_I can leave them here, and be gone before they even know they're under attack_,/i he thought. i_I can get back to my brothers before sunrise. Or…I can try to get them to shelter, and see if there's someone else who can take care of them_./i

There really wasn't a choice to make, was there?

"Go!" Leo grabbed the girl's arm, and shoved her away from her hut. "Go wake up everyone else! Hurry! Men are coming over the walls!"

She shrieked, and ran. The alarm went up in the village as she scrambled to spread the news.

By the time the first invader swung over the top and dropped into the cold mud inside the wall, Leonardo was herding a group of children up the faint path to the castle. "Here, take him," he shoved the baby at the nearest child who looked tall enough to hold on, and swung around to face the invaders. "Go on, get up to the gates! I'll hold them off!" His swords rang as he pulled them free.

The invaders weren't well-trained as fighters, Leonardo judged as he waded into battle. They worked well as a team, and followed orders quickly, but none of them individually had a great deal of skill with a weapon. And the weapons themselves were all over the map, from a sword that looked like something out of a bad Shakespearian production, to a nicked axe, to a scimitar. More to the point, the dozen or so men didn't seem to know how to handle an _actual_ skilled fighter – their main strength seemed to be in bravado and surprise, and they fell back at the resistance they found.

They paid for their lack of skill. Leonardo's swords were sharp, and he was fast, and the invading men lost three of their numbers before they could even begin to rally a defense. Four more died, screaming, while they shouted confusion and began to fall back to the palisade wall.

Two more lost their heads when they turned to run away.

The other three made it to the wall and scrambled over while their companions bled out. Leonardo leaped up to follow them, determined to see the whole thing through –

– only to stare in horror at what lay beyond. i_Ancestors, there's an army out there!_/i

He dropped back down into the village and hit the ground running.

The children were barely halfway up the path toward the castle. Leonardo could see them in the moonlight, fifteen children who were strong enough to walk on their own, and a handful of others who were being carried due to their age or weakness. But even the ones on their feet seemed to struggle on the path. "Go, go!" he ordered, putting some urgency into their movement. He glanced back over the wall. From that position on the path, he could see out across the plowed fields to the dark and moving mass of incoming invaders. While he looked, lanterns flickered into light in the distant crowd. "They know we're not just going to lay down and die because they sent a raiding party – but we've got to get to safety," he called over the heads of the children.

He didn't even have to try to talk over them – the oldest child in the group looked to be no more than ten or eleven years old.

"The monks won't let us in," the tallest boy panted. He slowed to hike a smaller child up onto his hip, and looked over his shoulder at Leonardo. "They say we'll bring the sickness inside."

"We'll see," Leonardo said grimly. He looked grimly at the heavy wooden doors, just coming into sight at the top of the path. i_Monks, huh? Aren't they supposed to take care of the orphans and the downtrodden?/i_ He calculated the time it would take to get inside. If he could get the children to safety before the moon fully set, then he could get away in the dark and make it back to his brothers without much risk of being spotted and followed. "Follow me, and i_hurry!_/i"

He ran ahead, reaching the monastery gate well ahead of his small charges, and beat on the wooden barrier with the hilt of a sword. "Open up!" he shouted. "The village is under attack!"

Nothing.

Leonardo ground his teeth and beat the door again. He could hear the children shuffling on the dirt path behind him, but even worse: he could hear the sounds of the attackers mounting a second, and stronger, attack on the village below.

A faint hint of noise threaded its way into the other sounds, something from above the heavy wooden gate. "I can't," a timid voice called down, barely loud enough to reach Leonardo's ears. "The abbot said we have to wait for the sickness to run its course."

Leonardo stepped back and took a deep breath as he sheathed his swords, gauging the location that the voice had come from. "The sickness isn't what's about to kill all of these children," he called back grimly while he dug in a pouch at his belt for his climbing claws. Before the voice overhead could stammer out another frightened excuse, Leonardo was already in motion, climbing up the massive gate to the parapet above.

Voices shouted down below, too. While Leonardo swung himself over the thick stone wall, the invading force reached the flimsy wooden palisade… and set it on fire. Leo caught glimpse of the red torchlight just as he dropped below the edge of the parapet and confronted the timid man holding the gates shut. "Open the gate!" he demanded, advancing on the man.

"A demon!" the man said faintly, scrabbling away from the Turtle. "Oh holy mother, save us…"

Leo didn't wait to hear more. He dropped over the inner edge of the parapet wall, slowing his descent with the climbing claws, and landed on his feet in front of the heavy gate. It only took a moment to lift an ancient, brass-studded wooden beam out of the way of a smaller door cut into the big gate. "Hurry!" he called to the children who were just reaching the entrance, and beginning to whimper in fear at the sight below in the village. "Get in here!"

They hurried, as much as their weakness would allow. The last one through the gate was the tallest boy. He staggered through and let the toddler on his hip slide to the ground, in the same motion that he turned to help Leonardo bar the door again. "They'll burn our houses," he whispered as he struggled to catch his breath.

"Probably so – " Leo began, only to stop abruptly as he felt water splash onto his shell. "What the…?"

Turning, he found the timid man – a monk, by his clothing – standing nearby, furiously scooping water out of an oddly shaped bowl and tossing it in Leonardo's direction. "Out, demon, out!" he said in a voice that was almost steady.

Moving slowly enough to allow a few more splashes, Leo reached out and took the bowl out of the man's hand. "Since I'm not in pain or disappearing," he said carefully, keeping control of his simmering irritation without bothering to hide it, "then it makes sense that I'm either not a demon, or your ritual doesn't work."

"But – but that's a relic of Saint Katherine!" the man blurted, eyes wide.

Leonardo glanced down at the bowl that he held just long enough to determine that it was the gold-plated dome of a human skull. "Eww," he said under his breath. He offered it back to the monk. "Like I said: clearly I'm not a demon."

The man took the bowl hesitantly, his eyes wide.

"Now," Leonardo began, "there are men attacking the village, and the children need somewhere safe to stay." Satisfied that he had done all he could do, Leonardo reached for the wall again, intending to climb up and be gone – his brothers would be as worried about him now, he reasoned, as he was worried about them.

A thin scream rose behind him.

Leonardo whipped around and into a defensive crouch. But there was no incoming attack. Instead, the little girl he'd spoken to in the village was crouched on the ground in front of the gate, holding her baby brother at last. "He's dead," she sobbed. "Like Mama…"

Leo sagged against the wall. i_All of that, and I wasn't fast enough for that one,_/i he mourned.

The older boy pushed himself off the gate and went to his knees next to the girl. "Give him to me," he said gently. "Stassi, give him to me…"

"Get away from him!" the monk said, his voice going tight and frightened again. "Benni, the sickness – !"

"He didn't die of the sickness, uncle…I mean, Brother Christopher," Benni said absently, arranging the tiny body in his arms. "There's no food, and it's winter. He wasn't strong enough to make it."

i_Wasn't strong enough…/_i Leonardo suppressed a shiver at the calm words. He thought of his brothers, of Donatello, who was certainly strong enough normally, but who actually i_was_/i stricken with "the sickness". i_I have to get out of here!/_i

"Brother Christopher," a voice boomed across the open area suddenly. "What is the meaning of this?"

The children, who were already looking dispirited and exhausted, shrank even more at the words.

Leonardo could have taken advantage of the distraction and slipped away. i_Should_/i have taken advantage of the distraction, and he knew it. But the voice made him fear that all his work of the evening would be wasted, suddenly. Instead of scrambling up the wall and away, he straightened and stepped out into the open area. "The village is under attack," he said again, firmly. "The children need a safe place to stay."

The man who had spoken emerged from the shadows of the building opposite the gate and walked carefully across the open space, his eyes fixed on Leonardo. He said nothing as he walked. There was an air of calm authority and experience to the man. The faint light of the pre-dawn sky glinted off the thick silver chain and the jewel-studded silver cross that the man wore around his neck. When he reached the little group, his sharp gaze roamed over the children, Brother Christopher, and Benni, before returning to Leonardo. "I see," he said finally.

The Turtle folded his arms, waiting. It was a power play, he recognized it. By being silent and imposing, showing his authority without flaunting it, the man was waiting to see a display of weakness. Leonardo appreciated the trick, but didn't have the time or the inclination to be the one who showed weakness.

Benni stepped up to Leonardo's side, still holding the dead baby. "We need to give him a proper burial, my lord abbot," the boy said, and offered the body to the man.

The abbot glanced down at the tiny body, and flinched.

Leonardo felt the tension ease out of the air as the challenging stare was broken, and he spared a moment to be grateful to the boy. Whatever else was going on, it was obvious that Benni was a sharp kid!

After a moment, the abbot said, "Yes, of course. Bring him to the chapel. Brother Christopher, ring the bells, and make arrangements for the children – food, beds, the like." He started to turn away, then glanced back over his shoulder at Leonardo, his eyes sharp on the hilts that stood up behind Leo's shoulder. "I see that you are from the Far East," he murmured, pitching his voice low enough to not carry to the ears of the children who were staggering to their feet and moving away across the courtyard.

i_Oh, it's a bit further off than that_,/i Leonardo thought of his home. Aloud he said only, "I have… family connections from Japan, though that is not my home."

"Japan?" the abbot's expression lightened in recognition. In the soft light, he looked satisfied by this. "I see." He turned away, making a gesture for the Turtle to follow him. "Come with me. After the burial, we will discuss this further."

"I can't stay," Leonardo didn't move. "I have to get back to… to my duties."

The abbot turned back, his eyes wide in near-alarm. "But if you leave now, you will be seen and shot by those below!"

"No, I…" Leo trailed off as he looked up at the sky. His heart sank. It had taken far too much time to get the children to safety – the moon was long gone, and the faint light in the sky was the soft glow of impending sunrise. If he tried to slip away now, the light would reveal him clearly against the stone wall of the monastery.

He was stuck, separated from his brothers and helpless to do anything for them.


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8**

Raphael paced around the small cave again. "He shoulda been back by now," he said to no one in particular. It wasn't the first time he'd said it, either.

Mike looked up from the game board he'd drawn in the dirt to teach Mari how to play tic-tac-toe. His eyes were serious, for once, as he said, "He's gonna be okay. He probably just found a lead on Renet, and it's taking him longer than he expected. That's all."

It wasn't very satisfying as an answer, mostly because it couldn't be checked. "I don't know what's gotten into you guys, running off on your own when you know better than to take off like that," he growled at Donatello as his pacing took him across the mouth of the cave, where his brother sat watch over the creek.

Don turned his head to watch Raph go past. "It's possible that you've finally infected us," he deadpanned.

"Not funny, Don," Raph warned. He didn't have much of a sense of humor when he was worried.

"Raph, there's nothing we can do," Don shifted around on his seat to watch Raphael pace. "You're just making yourself crazy…and making the rest of us dizzy."

"He's not making me dizzy," Mari frowned at Don.

Raph had to smirk at that. Mari had been totally unruffled to find herself surrounded by walking, talking turtles when she woke up, but had apparently decided that Raphael was her hero and could do no wrong. She was a little more skeptical about his brothers, though, and it showed.

"Of course you're not dizzy," Mike soothed. He glanced down at the board. "But you're still not beating me at tic-tac-toe, either." He made a mark, then drew a line across the dirt board. "Hah! I win again."

Mari gave him a look of indifference, and shoved her thick hair back behind her ears again.

Michaelangelo made a _tsk_ sound, and reached for the knot on his mask. "C'mere, princess. Let's do something about your hair."

"What do _you_ know about hair?" Raph scoffed as he made his way around another circuit of the cave.

"I know enough to get it out of a little girl's way so it doesn't bug her," Mike countered as he got to his feet and knelt down behind Mari, who hadn't budged. She held perfectly still as the Turtle pulled the silk of his mask under the mass of her hair and wrapped it around her head until it resembled a headband, then tied it off with a tiny bow above her ear. "There! That's better, right?"

Mari touched the silk band over her ear, and looked up at Mike. She said nothing. Her look of wariness softened a little bit, though, and Mike beamed at her.

"It'll have to do until we can find a hairbrush. And someone who knows how to use it," Don said from the entrance. He looked amused.

Raph looked from one to the other of his brothers, then at the lengthening shadows outside the cave. Something _clicked_ in his head as he hit an internal snapping point. "That's it. We gotta go. Leo's out there somewhere, and we're gonna go find him!"

To his tremendous surprise, no one argued with him.

Donatello stood up, shouldering the leather satchel that Raph had snagged from the village the night before. It held what was left of their meager food supplies, Raph knew. Michaelangelo turned and kicked dirt over the embers of their tiny fire, then kept on turning in a circle until he could scoop Mari up and set her on his shell. "Okay, we're ready to go!"

Raphael paused, looking each of them in the eye. Donatello looked calm and balanced again – his normal self, like he had been before this latest round of time-traveling craziness started. Mike bounced on the balls of his feet, trying to jostle a giggle out of the girl. He also seemed fit and ready. And Mari…she looked back at Raph with the same steady, green-eyed gaze that she'd leveled on everything. She didn't look the least bit nervous, and it reassured him. _Besides, it's not like I can drop her off with a sitter or anything,_ he admitted to himself. _We got no choice but to take her with us._

They headed out into the shadows of early evening.

Mari didn't weigh much, but carrying her slowed Mike down, and his brothers necessarily slowed down to match his speed. They still moved fast enough to get close to the village well before sunset.

"We're gonna have to wait until it gets dark to go in," Raph frowned as he worked out a strategy when they were less than a quarter of a mile from the edge of the forest.

"Maybe by then, Leo will come out looking for – wait!" Mike stopped in his tracks. "What's that? Do you hear it?"

They came to instant alert. Mari went still as stone on Mike's shell, her eyes wide in the dusk. All four them listened tensely.

"That's what it sounded like, at that camp where I picked Mari up," Raphael realized.

Don looked around at the trees, grabbed a branch, and swung himself up to get a better view. Mike and Mari huddled at the base of the tree, looking up anxiously at his shadow as he moved above them, going for the highest branches that would bear his weight. Raphael thought he heard the very tiniest of whimpers come from the girl's throat.

"It's gonna be okay, princess," Mike patted her leg absently, confirming Raph's suspicions. "We're not gonna let anything happen to you. But we have to be very, very quiet right now, okay?"

Mari nodded, and buried her face in the back of Michaelangelo's neck.

Donatello slid back down, using the branches to ease himself out of the tree instead of jumping. Raphael almost asked him why, then realized he was favoring his hurt knee again, and swallowed the question. "I don't know if it's the same people, but it's a camp all right. Big one, too – and the worst part is, they've got the castle surrounded on every side except the river."

"Crap," Raphael said succinctly.

"Yeah," Mike sighed. "What do we do now?"

"We're not even sure he's in there," Don pointed out. "We're just guessing that he came this way."

Raphael didn't have any particular strength in tracking anyone, even his brothers, with anything other than his five senses. He couldn't even begin to track Leo through the spirit realm or whatever it was that Master Splinter tried to teach them every so often. But he felt a deep certainty that they were on Leonardo's invisible trail. "He came this way," Raph said confidently.

Don looked doubtful. "It's not like we've got any better ideas," he admitted. "So… how do we get in there? Or what if he's not in the castle at all, but in the camp? How will we know?"

They crept closer to the treeline, dropping into total silence. Michaelangelo hung back slightly, shielding Mari. At last, they were able to see what lay between them and the castle at the top of the hill. Raph snarled at what he saw, and what he didn't see. "The village – it's gone."

"Damn," Mike breathed softly. "I've got a bad feeling about this, guys."

Raphael did, too, but it was hard to be sure that was what he really felt under the adrenaline rush of fear for their missing brother. "We gotta find Leo."

"Where?" Don hissed. His eyes looked a little too wide behind his mask. "In the camp, or the castle?"

"I don't know!" Raphael snapped. He looked back and forth between the two options.

"Look," Mari said, startling all of them. She pointed up at the castle. "Is that yours?"

Raphael squinted up at the castle, wondering what she saw that they hadn't seen. "I don't – wait. Is that…?"

The cold wind shifted. And they all saw it: the flash of red silk curling and twisting in the breeze. Leonardo's mask hung from a pole that was braced against the highest point of the castle.

"He's up there!" Michaelangelo sounded relieved.

Raphael's lip curled. "Is he there 'cause he wants to be? Or did they grab him?"

"If they did, he wouldn't've told them all about using his mask as a signal," Mike countered.

Don said nothing. His eyes were fixed and wide on the flash of red silk.

"Okay, we need a plan," Raphael tamped down the urge to pace, and instead focused on the camp. "We wait until it gets dark. Then we find the thinnest area of the camp – think it's over there? – and get up to the castle – "

"Monastery," Michaelangelo interrupted.

" – and then we get Leo out of there," Raph ignored him. He wasn't sure what needed to be done after that, since Renet was still missing, but he was sure that Leo would have an idea.

"There's a lot of people there," Michaelangelo murmured, looking through the trees. The camp spread out in a large semi-circle around the hill that formed the base of the castle. The tents were pitched three and four deep in most places, though, and that seemed like a good thing – easier to find a break in the coverage, and move past the camp in the dark of night. "Hey, it looks like they're going over there!" he pointed.

Sure enough, it looked like most of the people in the camp were moving through it toward a larger, open-sided tent at the back of the camp. The wind shifted again, briefly, and they caught a scent of cooking meat. "Dinner," Raph realized out loud. "They're all going to get some food."

He looked at his brothers in the half-light. Mike patted Mari's leg absently, though the girl had been dead-silent since pointing out Leo's mask. Don's eyes glittered in the low light. "Looks like we're gonna get a chance to get up to the castle pretty quick, guys. Be ready! Mike, you get Mari up there as fast as you can, and Don and I will cover you. Stick to the shadows, don't get seen – " something tickled the edge of his awareness, and he yanked his head back in pure reflex. An arrow flew through the space where his head had been. "What the – ?"

"We've been spotted!" Mike hissed, throwing himself backwards.

The arrow thunked into a tree just past Don's shoulder. A shout went up from the camp. "Demons!"

"Damn it!" Raphael swore. All his plans fell apart. "Go, go! Just get up to the castle! I'll keep 'em busy!" He pulled his sai out and launched himself in the direction of the camp.

They crashed out into the open. Michaelangelo shifted Mari around to his plastron, sheltering her as much as possible with his body. Donatello ran behind him, keeping his brother and the girl protected with his bo. Raphael lost sight of them in his own rush to combat.

The humans were confused and frightened. There was a great deal of shouting and screaming. Raphael found that no one would engage him, but instead ran from him. The archer who fired that first arrow vanished into the chaos.

He darted through the tents, pulling tent supports loose and knocking over any random items he could find, just to add to the confusion and buy his brothers more time. More shouts and screams split the twilight. Raphael risked a glance around, and didn't see Michaelangelo and Mari any longer. Donatello, though, appeared out of the billowing tent fabrics, looking grim. "Go!" Raph shouted at him.

"Not leaving you," Don growled, and darted past him.

Raphael wanted to argue. He wanted to _demand _that Don get his shell out of there. But just at that moment, the humans regrouped and made their counter-attack. And Raphael suddenly found himself too busy to talk.

He caught glimpses of Don in the thick of combat. The brothers were separated in the crowd. Don disappeared behind a row of tents. Raph heard the ringing of weapons, both from his own foes and from the area where Don had vanished. He tried to get back to his brother, but was kept too busy fending off attacks by humans who were more enraged than organized.

Raph was so busy, in fact, that he didn't realize it when he got more unexpected back up.

"Raph!" Leo's hand landed on his shoulder. "Fall back! You've done enough!"

"No!" Raphael panted. "These guys – Don!"

"I'll get him, you just fall back!" Leo kicked out the tent supports next to him, and swung the heavy cloth up into the faces of the next wave of attackers. The men struggled with the fabric. The Turtles darted past, knocking aside the stragglers who had evaded the tent-attack.

Ignoring the order, Raphael kept up with his brother. "You don't get to run off on your own," he frowned.

Leonardo grinned, a white flash in the dark. "You mean, I don't get to act like you?" His swords reflected glints of light from the torches that were being lit all around them.

"No," Raphael grunted as he knocked over one more human and slammed his head into the ground, then turned a corner in the camp to head down another row of tents after his brother. "Both you and Don – you need to knock this shit out! _I'm_ the loose cannon in this – whoa!" He slipped in a puddle of blood, caught his balance, and then simply stared.

Leo came up short next to him. Raph heard him whisper, "Ancestors…" in a shocked tone.

Ten feet away, a tent burned brightly, casting a red light on the scene. The empty spaces between the tents were thick with dead and dying men. And at the end of the row, still struggling with five opponents, was the blood-covered figure of their brother.

"We gotta help – " Raph started forward. But before he'd taken two steps, Donatello lashed out, spinning in a tight circle with a slashing move. Three men fell dead at his feet.

"Guys!" Michaelangelo found them. He had his weapons in hand. "Left Mari in the monastery. What's going – is that Don?"

The two remaining men fell, headless, on top of the bodies of their companions.

"What in the world?"

"Mike, get back!" Raph grabbed his arm and pulled him back a step.

They could hear Donatello's breath, harsh gasps for air. He was plainly visible in the light from the burning tent, and backlit by the torchlight that fell from yards away – the humans had fallen back, apparently afraid to try again to attack the "demons" in their camp. In that small moment of relative calm, the Turtles stared at their brother in shock.

He'd lost his bo at some point. He held a scimitar in one hand, and the upper half of a long spear in the other – both weapons were coated in blood, even down to the jagged end of the broken shaft of the spear. His face was utterly, completely blank. His eyes were wide and empty.

And then he turned that mindless gaze on them.

"Kes," Michaelangelo breathed.

"No!" Leonardo's response was immediate, and forceful. "There's no such person!"

The bloody Turtle moved toward them fluidly, quickly, over the fallen bodies of his kills. His frightening gaze stayed fixed on them. He held his weapons at the ready.

"Leo…"

"No!" he said again. His swords stayed low at his sides. "There is no 'Kes'. There's just…_Donatello_!" Leonardo called their brother's name in the sharp tones he used to snap out commands in combat.

Don froze. The scimitar and the spear wavered.

The blank gaze cracked and shattered. He blinked, staggered back a step, and looked around in confusion. His expression crumpled into lines of fear. "Guys…?"

"Come on!" Leo lunged forward and grabbed his wrist. "We don't have time – we have to get out of here!"

They ran.

Behind them, the humans finally rallied. Arrows rained down around the Turtles as they darted up the narrow dirt path to the monastery gate.

"You sure this is a good idea?" Raphael called over his shoulder.

"You have a better one?" Leo asked. He pushed Don ahead of him. "I'd love to hear it!"

Raph didn't have a better idea.

The monastery doors opened just ahead of them. They raced through. Leonardo shoved Don into the open space, and turned to yank the door out of the hands of a thin, dark man in monk's robes, slamming it shut and barring it. Raphael could hear arrows thunk against the thick, reinforced wood of the door.

He glanced around, assessing his brothers. Leonardo's swords showed streaks of blood, but he seemed uninjured. Michaelangelo had managed to avoid combat. And Donatello…he was coated in blood, and carrying different weapons than the one he'd started the day with, but it looked like he had gotten out of it without a scratch, too. His eyes were shadowed and shocked, but that was something that would have to be dealt with later, Raphael judged.

And then his eyes fell on the humans, clustered in the deep shadows of the courtyard. Raphael felt a chill that had nothing to do with the winter air, as he realized how many pairs of human eyes were looking at him.

"Well," he said over his shoulder to Leonardo, "what do we do now?"


	9. Chapter 9

_Author's note: I really hadn't forgotten about this story. I'm making every effort to finish it before the spring semester starts next month!_

_And now, at long last, we get to the reason the story is called 'sceptres' (plural) and 'strategies'._

**Chapter 9**

Before Leonardo could answer, there was an abrupt change in the noise coming from outside the monastery walls. Michaelangelo thought it sounded a lot like the crowd at a Yankees game, booing a ref call they didn't like.

"Incoming!" someone shouted, and suddenly arrows were raining out of the darkening sky into the open courtyard of the monastery.

Children and monks alike shrieked and ran for cover. Mike grabbed up Mari and tossed her backwards toward Raphael. "Let's not have a perforated princess, okay?" He snagged Donatello's arm and dragged him back, too. They retreated into the shadows at the foot of the wall, out of range of the arrows.

"They'll stop soon," Leonardo predicted coolly. "They won't keep wasting arrows, firing at what they can't see. This is just to let us know how angry they are." He reached out and pulled both Mike and Don closer to the wall, though.

Sure enough, the deadly hail tapered off after a minute or two. Michaelangelo tore his eyes off the arrows and focused on the other side of the courtyard. Two children had been hit, and lay sobbing in the mud. One of the monks had an arrow sticking out of his shoulder, but appeared to be totally unaware of it, so intent was he on shielding three other children with his own body. Everyone else appeared uninjured, though frightened out of their wits.

"Collect the arrows!" someone called from way too close for comfort, and Michaelangelo swiveled around to see a tall, dark monk step out of the shadows just past Leonardo. The faint light glinted off the gems on the silver cross that hung from the heavy chain he wore around his neck. "We can use them to defend ourselves. Brother Christopher, Brother Benjamin! Get the children to stay in the sisters' dormitory; it is on the farthest side away from the gate…" He started to stride off, handing out orders all along the way, as monks gathered themselves together. Then he checked his steps and turned back to look intensely at the Turtles, and especially at… "Leonardo, is this everyone?"

Leonardo's eyelids slid down partway, concealing something Mike couldn't quite read. "Almost, Lord Abbot. The woman is still missing. We lost her prior to coming into your lands."

"I see," the man's mouth tightened, and his nose flared. Michaelangelo was fascinated by how clearly he showed his disapproval, even through his courtesies. "Please take your troops, and your… princess… to my study. I will be there as soon as things are in order here." He pivoted neatly on his heel, black robe flaring out, and resumed his stride across the open courtyard.

"We're your troops," Michaelangelo chortled. "Troops!"

"Nothin' funny about that, Mike," Raphael said darkly. He glowered at the man walking away. " 'zat the big boss around here, Leo?"

"Yes, he's…wait. Where's Don?"

"What?" Mike spun around, one more time. "I swear, he picks the weirdest times to go all 'ninja-vanish' on us!"

Leonardo sighed. "I guess he's feeling better? Spread out. Search for him. Meet me back here in twenty minutes. That's twenty, Mike, not sixty!"

Mike stuck his tongue out at Leo as his big brother faded into the shadows and headed back toward the gate. Raphael hitched Mari up onto his shoulders and disappeared through a doorway.

"Now, where would I go if I were morose and covered in blood?" Michaelangelo wondered out loud. His eyes fell on a massive, half-open doorway on the far side of the courtyard, exactly opposite the heavy gates. Faint orange light – torchlight, Mike guessed – spilled out of the open door and showed him two monks who tossed looks of horror over their faces as they ran away from something inside what must be the chapel. "Bingo!"

The heavy chapel door was open just wide enough to squeeze a Turtle shell through. So Mike did just that, his eyes wide at the jewel-like interior of the small church. Frescos of saints and angels climbed the walls to a ceiling studded with stars that actually sparkled with inlaid gems. Gold leaf adorned the paintings on the walls. The mosaic floor underfoot was smooth and level and perfectly clean, showing off an elaborate pattern of leaves intertwined around spears and swords. The ceiling was held up with fluted columns that were embellished with gold and silver on the high capitals.

But the centerpiece of all of this was a massive statue of a woman, draped in yards and yards of brilliant blue fabric. From the base of her plinth to the top of her head, she must have been twelve feet tall, Mike decided, craning his head back to look at her. One huge stone hand was upraised, palm open to the glittery ceiling above. It looked incredibly delicate and graceful for something carved out of marble. Her expressionless eyes were directed somewhere off in the distance toward the open doorway. The real fabric dress that covered her stone body was draped and pinned in place in some invisible way that left only her face, hair, and that one graceful hand exposed. It shimmered and moved in the faint breeze that came through the open door. Incense burned in great metal trays at her stone feet, and Mike wondered how many times her impossibly huge dress had caught fire, even as his mouth shaped a completely different sentiment: "Wow!"

A shuffling noise caught his ear, and he turned his head to see Donatello sitting against one of the columns near the base of the statue.

"Oh, hey! I thought I'd find you here," Michaelangelo tried to sound more casual than he felt. Don looked terrible. The blood had dried on him, and in the torchlight it made him look dark and frightening. He'd wiped at his face with sticky hands, and the resulting smears only heightened the effect that he was slightly crazed. Worse, he wouldn't make eye contact.

Mike dropped to the ground next to his brother, craning his neck to look up at the blue clad statue again. "Man, that's some dress! Wonder what size she wears – gotta be a 96 or a 98, at least!" He nudged Don. "Get it? I mean, if April wears an 8, there's no way that this one can – "

"It's Athena," Don said in a whisper. He didn't look up. All of his attention went to his hands, knotted in his lap. "This is, is, is an old Greek temple. I think. Romans came, built a fort later, m-m-made it their own. Then they left, and it's a monastery. The monks called her 'Mary' when they left me – they don't even know. They don't know, Mikey. They cover things up and pretend they know, but they don't know."

"Really?" Mike eyed the statue with new interest. "A real Greek statue? A real _old_ Greek statue?" He hopped to his feet and darted over to the plinth. The blue fabric swayed just out of reach, and he had to stretch to snag his fingers in it. Then he had the tiniest fold of it between thumb and finger, and he lifted the fabric just enough to glance underneath. A massive foot in a thin sandal revealed itself to his gaze, and just beside it, completely hidden away by the fabric, was an immense stone shield, with the head of Medusa carved into its center. "Wow," Mike said again, letting the fabric fall and stepping back to regard the statue with new appreciation. "Donnie, you were right. It's Athena – it's got to be!"

Don nodded without looking up from his fingers.

"Wow," Michaelangelo couldn't stop himself from saying it one more time as he came back and dropped down beside Don again. "How old do you think that is, now? I mean, it's not like it was new when the monks moved in, right? So even in this time, whatever time it is, this is a really old treasure! It belongs in a museum. Do they even have museums now? Would a museum be able to move it? I don't know where it could go, but that dress would have to stay here, I tell you. You could make a lot of clothes for the Von Trapp kids out of that much fabric! … Hey, uh. We should get back. Leo's looking for you."

Don dropped his head into his hands. He whispered, "He shouldn't."

Mike tore his eyes away from the statue and took in his brother's pose. "Dude. Hey, don't get that stuff in your eyes – you don't know where those guys have been!" He pried Don's hands away from his face. Dried blood flaked under his fingers as he held Don's hands tightly. "You didn't…what's that smell?" He sniffed experimentally. Underneath the incense, there was a sick, meaty smell. He'd been so preoccupied with the statue that he hadn't noticed it before. Now he leaned in and sniffed at his brother. "Nope. You need a bath, dude, but this is worse than you. What is that?"

Don wrenched his hands away and tucked them under his arms. Without making eye contact, he muttered, "Catacombs. Underneath the statue. There's… there's been a lot of dead people around here, lately."

Mike swallowed. He got to his feet and padded around the statue, covering his mouth and nose as he went. There, on the back side of the massive statue, was an opening in the floor. The door that must've normally covered it was flung open. Roughly carved stone steps descended into blackness. And from the darkness, the rotting smell flowed out, stronger than ever.

Mike gagged and stumbled back to his brother. "C'mon, get up! We gotta find the others."

Don sagged, using his own weight to pull himself free. "I can't. I can't, Mikey, I can't."

"You can!" Mike knelt to look at Don's face, or try to. "Don. C'mon, bro, snap out of it."

"Snap?" Don laughed, harshly. "M-mikey, I think that's the problem. I snapped. I snapped."

"Yeah, and you really did a number on those mercenaries," Mike tried for another angle to get his brother moving.

Don twisted free and slumped to the floor again. "Mike, stop! Just, just… just leave me alone. Please. I don't want to hurt you."

"Like you could!" Mike scoffed, instantly stung to bravado. Then he realized what Donatello meant. "Oh. Oh, hey, Donnie – hey, you didn't hurt us. We're all okay."

"But I could have!" Don blazed. He glared at Michaelangelo, finally making eye contact. "I could have hurt you, Mike! I totally lost control, I reverted to some kind of, of, of killing machine, and I didn't even know enough to realize you were there. When I think about it, Mike, I-I-I…" he faltered, and fell silent, squeezing his eyes shut.

Mike let him go and sat down on the floor next to him again. "Hey, it's okay. You did good, and we're all okay," he went on like that for a while, pitching his voice low and soothing to counter the wild fear he'd seen in his brother's eyes.

After a while, Don sighed and slumped forward. The tension flowed out of him, allowing his tightly-held limbs to uncoil at last. "Why is it always you who pulls me back?" he said, turning his head without lifting it, so that he regarded Michaelangelo from a strange, sideways angle.

Mike shook his head, smiling to cover his lack of comprehension. He drew in a breath to suggest that they finally go find their brothers – _Leo must be having kittens right about now_, he thought ruefully; _I've been gone a lot longer than twenty minutes!_ – when Don interrupted him.

"I've been having this nightmare, since I got home," he confessed, voice almost too low to hear. "I never dreamed it while I was in the Arena, but ever since then…I dream that I walk out onto the sands, all kitted up and drugged and ready to kill something…and you're out there. You, or Leo, or Raph, or sometimes all of you. And I'm supposed to fight you. I have to fight you, or Shadow will die…and I wake up, absolutely terrified. Because I don't know what I would do. I don't know how to get us out of that terrible place, and I don't know if I can decide who should die: me, and maybe Shadow with me, or one of my brothers." His voice cracked. "If I could just…if I could come up with a solution, I could handle the nightmares. But I never can come up with a solution, and it's, it's, it's…"

"It's just a nightmare, bro," Mike risked putting an arm around him to urge him to his feet. "A nightmare. It didn't happen. You didn't have to fight us – "

"If it comes to that, Mike, you have to kill me," Don allowed himself to be pulled upright. "Seriously, brother, you have to promise me – "

"Don't talk stupid," Mike said, roughly. He shook Don a little bit. "You don't let me plan out how we're gonna survive the zombie apocalypse, so you don't get to make stupid plans from your nightmares, either. It was a dream!" he insisted.

"But it could've happened!" Don insisted.

"What could've happened?" a voice said from the doorway. Leo walked into view, his Angry Leader expression almost enough to cover the worry that flickered into his eyes as he took in Donatello's state. "Wait, let me guess. You _could've_ found Renet, opened up a time-tunnel to take us all home, and come running to get Raph and me so we could all get out of here. Or you _could've_ woken up in front of the TV and decided that all of this was just a dream – "

"You don't do sarcasm very well, Leo," Mike interrupted. He glared at his brother. "We were just talking about Don's little, er, session down in the camp, and how it could've _gone wrong_." He hoped that the emphasis on the last two words would be enough to convey his meaning, and gave Leo what he hoped was a Significant Look.

Something must've worked. Leo hesitated, took a better look at Don, and softened. "Come on. There's hot water and blankets upstairs. Let's get cleaned up." And he reached out and pulled Donatello along, away from the monstrously huge statue and the terrible smell it sat over.

Michaelangelo cast one last look back at it as he left. Athena/Mary held her open hand up to the artificial sky, and didn't change expression at all. Her eyes were looking at them.

* * *

"'bout time you jerks showed up," Raphael grumbled as they came in through the door into a dark, warm room lit only by a fire. He tossed a wet rag at Don, who caught it mechanically. "This place gives me the creeps, Leo. And who's Tall, Dark, and Creepy out there? The boss-man?"

Mike goggled at the books and scrolls on the shelves. His eye was caught by a map spread out on a wide table, and he struggled to make sense of it until it finally occurred to him that the entirety of the Americas and Australia were missing from it. Also, none of the countries in Europe had exactly the outlines he expected!

"Abbot Alexius," Leo corrected. He frowned at Don and dragged him closer to the fire, where a shallow basin of water steamed on the hearth. "Wash all of that off, Don, it can't be healthy… He's the highest authority around here. Apparently he's an educated man – look at all of the books he's got, and you know that's not normal for this time – he's traveled, he's actually got a reasonably-accurate map of the world, though he thinks that the lands east of India are populated by half-human, half-animal people, which is why he's not all that surprised by us." Leo took the rag out of Donatello's hand, dipped it in the warm water, and wrung it out. "He has a really bad wood-block print out of Japan, of a samurai in full battle armor, with a fox-crest on the helmet. The print is so bad, it looks like the fox's head actually is the face of the samurai. Here, Don, let me scrub at that…how'd you get blood in there?...take off your gear."

"I've got it, Leo," Don murmured tonelessly. He knelt and dipped the cloth in the basin, then rubbed at his face with the rough cloth.

"Hey, princess!" Mike beamed at Mari when he finally realized she was standing behind Raphael. She looked back at him expressionlessly. Someone had given her a clean, cream-colored tunic to replace her torn and shabby one. Her hair had been combed out, but was still tied back under Mike's mask, and she still wore Raph's mask as a belt around the pale fabric at her waist. "Are you hungry? I know where the kitchen is – let's go get some food!"

"Mikey, be back here in twenty minutes," Leo said in warning tones. "And I mean, twenty minutes!"

"Yes, mom!" Mike rolled his eyes as he scooped Mari up. "Sheesh, see if I bring them anything to eat!" he mock-whispered to the girl.

The noises in the kitchen rolled out to them long before they got in sight. Mike hefted Mari up nervously. "If this doesn't work out, princess… if it looks like the natives are gonna get restless, and I say 'Run!', then you run back to Raph, right?"

She nodded solemnly.

Everyone fell silent as soon as he stepped into the huge kitchen. Mike gulped back a tremor of nerves, and pasted a big smile on his face. "Hi, everyone!" He waved at the room, generally.

No one waved back.

"Okay, then!" he plowed on. "I was wondering if I could get something for the princess and her troops." He jostled Mari a little bit in his arms. She stared at the room without changing expression. The monks, about a dozen men in all, stared back at her with wide eyes. The handful of children also stared at her.

Mike had a moment to be struck by the contrast between the child he carried, and the children of the village. Mari was thin and slightly-built, to Mike's eyes, but compared to the children of the village, she looked sleek and healthy and well cared-for. She might have missed a few meals in her life, but she didn't have the look of someone who had faced starvation. Clean, well-dressed, and brushed, she looked positively regal, compared to the rags and tangles of the children in front of her.

And the contrast was only heightened by the way her wide green eyes stared impassively at children, and even adults, who stared back at her like they were dazzled.

Mike's heart was wrung with pity for the children. _Ah, jeez, just look at 'em! Doesn't any of 'em have a parent to wash their faces or something?_

"You…" one of the monks jerked himself out of his contemplation of Mari, and turned his attention to Michaelangelo. "You are one of the turtle-men, the soldiers…you come from the outside! You bring royalty and doom and salvation!"

"Um," Mike cast around for a way to stop talking to the monk, who seemed to suddenly have Crazy Eyes. "Well, right now, I just bring a hungry girl. And hungry…soldiers. Yes, hungry turtle-men soldiers! Can I get something to take back to them? Some bread and cheese, maybe?"

"Two nights before you came, demons stole bread from the ovens," the man sang. "I make bread…I make bread for everyone! And demons took bread away, and now we are cursed!"

One of the children at the table behind him started to cry.

"Um, no," Michaelangelo squirmed a little inside, thinking of his theft of the bread. "I don't think that's how it works. If the demons take bread, that means they leave you alone, yes?"

"The demons brought sickness and death! The sisters all died first! We buried them, and the demons were not satisfied, but laid waste to the village below – "

"The bread is burning in the ovens, Brother Justinian," a tall boy appeared at the raving man's elbow, interrupting him before he could really settle in to his topic. The monk looked around like he was waking from a bad dream, and allowed himself to be sent back to the ovens, where he shook and muttered and peered into the red depths.

"You're one of Leonardo's brothers?" the tall boy asked shyly. "He saved us all. Let me help you get something put together…"

And in short order, Michaelangelo found himself heading back toward the abbot's study, followed by a short train of monks carrying trays of food, acting under orders from a ten-year-old boy who seemed to be the only one with a functioning brain.

* * *

The abbot returned while they were eating, and settled himself wearily onto a padded bench furthest away from the fire. "I do not know how long this can last," he said to Leonardo, as though continuing a conversation from earlier. "One month at best, and we fall."

Leo swallowed a mouthful of soup. "Your messenger to the emperor?"

"Who knows?" Abbot Alexius dipped a crust of bread into Don's abandoned soup bowl. "Even if he were so inclined to send troops, this horrible disease is rampant in the capitol as well." He nibbled at the crust. "Two of the children are ill with the disease, and will probably not live out the night."

Mike looked up, stricken. His own mouthful of soup suddenly went tasteless, and he swallowed it with an effort.

"Surely he won't let the Sceptre of Helen fall into enemy hands?" Leo hazarded.

"The what of who?" Raphael asked for all of them.

"The Sceptre of Helen," Abbot Alexius sighed. "It is a relic of Saint Helen, the mother of Constantine the Great, founder of the Eastern Empire. She founded this monastery in her declining years, and bequeathed to it a royal sceptre made of gold and ivory and precious gems. After she was named a saint, a crystal with one of her finger bones was added to the sceptre. It is the greatest treasure in any monastery outside of Constantinople itself, for its monetary value at the very least – even the relics of John the Baptist and Saint Peter are not housed as richly. People travel for thousands of miles to see it and pray to Helen and ask her blessings."

Raphael traded a skeptical look with Mike. "So that's why you got a small army camped out on your doorstep? They want your gold and stuff?"

"And other things," the Abbot admitted, distracted. He looked musingly at Mari, who was asleep on a cushion next to Raphael's leg.

"One of the monks is a member of the royal family," Leo explained to his brothers. "Abbot Alexius thinks that the mercenaries will try to capture and then ransom the monk for a lot of money – the emperor won't want his half-sibling to be used as a pawn in someone else's dynastic ploys, and will pay a lot of money to get him back."

"A royal bastard," the abbot admitted in a low voice. "Not normally considered for the throne, but…sold to the right court, a royal bastard related to the emperor could be very valuable."

Mike whistled, low, and set his soup bowl aside for the last time. "I've seen this plot played out before, in one of those soap operas. It doesn't end well for anyone but the evil advisor who's secretly pulling all the strings!"

Raphael threw a cushion at him. "Go to sleep, Mikey, you're not makin' any sense!"

Mike caught the cushion and glared at his brother. "No, I really saw this story play out – " the yawn snuck up on him. He blinked and looked around at Donatello, who had given up and collapsed into sleep an hour earlier, and now lay in the shadows near the fire, wrapped in two blankets. "It's been a long day," he admitted, yawning again with the exhaustion that crept up on him. "Maybe I'll remember it better tomorrow…"

He curled up next to Don, and fell asleep before he could even remember the name of the show.


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter 10**

Leonardo heard the echo behind the heavy wooden door when he knocked on it, and wondered exactly how bleak things must be behind it.

He wondered it again a few minutes later, when it finally creaked open and Donatello looked out, his eyes dark with exhaustion. "Leo? Is everything okay?" He paused, and seemed to reconsider his own question for a heartbeat. "I mean - has anything changed?"

"The mercenaries came to the gate this morning to parley," Leonardo admitted slowly. He wondered if he was making a serious mistake - Don had locked himself away in the wing of the monastery that had once housed the 'sisters' of the order, along with the children and the monks who had fallen ill with the plague. And it appeared that things were not going well for Don, in his self-imposed isolation ward. _Maybe it's not right to burden him with this, too? _Leo wondered.

"So was it what you expected?" Don squinted past Leo, taking in the empty courtyard and the weak winter sunlight.

"It was," Leo confirmed with a sigh. "They say they'll spare everyone if we hand over all the gold and gems, and the royal bastard. And all the stored food."

"Ah," Don nodded. "And that was the sticking point, of course. It doesn't do any good if we give them what they want and they go away, leaving us all to starve to death."

Leonardo shook his head. "Even more than that - I don't believe them. I don't think they actually would 'go away'. It's nothing I can put my finger on, but...I just didn't trust them. Even if we gave them everything they wanted, I still feel like they'd turn on us in a heartbeat, and slaughter everyone here."

"You gotta trust your instincts, Leo," Don said around a yawn. "You read people well."

_Do I?_ Aloud, Leo finally asked the question that had been preying on him since his brother had volunteered to take on the task of tending to the sick. "Don - are you okay?"

Donatello looked away. "It's...fine, Leo. It's just harder than I thought it would be." His eyes flicked up to meet Leonardo's for just a second before he went back to studying the doorframe. "I'm still the best person for this job, Leo - I'm the only person we can be sure has already been exposed, and has immunity. I can't take that chance with anyone else here. Not even you," he said with some force.

"I know," Leo agreed, with some sadness. It was an argument he'd already lost, when Don made his decision the morning after their arrival, and he wasn't really interested in hashing it out again. In truth, he felt like he would be more effective outside anyway, where he could help with the defenses and the strategy for the monastery. "I just meant...Donnie, you look terrible. Are things okay in there?"

Don grimaced. "It was a bad night," he admitted quietly. "I lost three of them, one right after the other."

Leonardo sucked in a breath. "Damn," he breathed it back out again. "Who?"

"Christopher, Stassi, and Wulf," Don admitted. His eyes were distant as he recited the names of the dead - one monk and two children. "Give me a little while, and I'll have the bodies ready to move to the crypt."

Leo nodded. There wasn't anything else to say to that, so he stood back and let Don close the door, leaving him outside and away from the dying.

Abbot Alexius waited for him just a few feet away, frowning. "More deaths? Brother Christopher is a grave loss to me, and to this monastery. He was one of the few here who took holy orders as a youth, and he was a devoted servant of the Lord. And the children..." he cut himself off with a sigh. "I have run out of things to say over the bodies of dead children," he admitted, his mouth twisting.

"With those deaths, there are still three monks and two children ill," Leonardo calculated out loud. "And with only five healthy monks and another five healthy children, we don't have enough coverage for the battlements, not if this goes on much longer."

"At least there are three fewer mouths to feed," Alexius admitted to his own calculations. "Our stored food may last until the emperor can send help."

_If he ever does,_ Leonardo thought sourly. After a week imprisoned in the monastery, watching monks and children die of the plague, and still clueless as to Renet's whereabouts, his cynicism on that point was high.

* * *

Raphael helped two monks carry the bodies down into the crypt in the afternoon, and emerged with his face dark from the effort not to breathe the foul air underneath the statue of Mary. He glanced at Abbot Alexius and the monks who were performing a funeral service, shook his head, and walked out of the jeweled church into the sunlight. Leonardo followed him outside and put a hand on his shoulder. "You okay?"

"Yeah," Raph breathed deep, tilting his head up and closing his eyes to the weak winter sun. "Just gotta get that smell outta my nose."

"You didn't have to do that," Leo pointed out.

"Yeah, I did," Raph shook him off. "This place sucks enough for all of us, without having Mike go down there." He frowned, his expression even more obviously grim without the red mask. "What are we gonna do, Leo?"

"What we've been doing - keep watch on the mercenaries, keep looking for a way out, and wait for Renet to come back. What else can we do?" it was almost impossible to keep the bitter tone out of his voice.

"We could just go," Raphael looked at him seriously. "Leo - you know it, too. We could climb down over the wall. We can get out of here in the middle of the night and be miles away before anyone knows we're gone. We don't know this is what we're supposed to be doin' for that dizzy blonde! What if we're making a mistake?"

It hit too close to his own thoughts for comfort. "We're not abandoning these people, Raph!" Leo said with more heat than he meant to use.

"These people are all dead!" Raph hissed, stepping in close. "In our time, they're all long gone, and no one even remembers them! Why are we killin' ourselves to protect them?"

"Are you planning to take Mari with us, when we leave?" Leonardo got himself under control enough to ask in his driest voice, going for his brother's weak spot.

It worked, too. Raphael's mouth opened once, soundlessly, and then closed again. "That's what I thought," Leo said, and turned away. He wanted to get something to eat before taking his shift on the battlements.

* * *

Leonardo liked to take the evening shift. By the end of the day, everyone was tired, including the invading army. The setting sun cast long, dramatic shadows up the hill from the mercenary camp, and showed him their preparations for their evening meal - and exposed some of their weaknesses.

"Look over to the south," Leonardo said to Abbot Alexius. "Don't point! Don't let them know you're looking. Just...glance over there, and then look away. What do you see?"

The abbot did as instructed. "The tents over there are shabby and isolated from the rest. What is it?"

"I'm not sure," Leonardo stepped back from the wall. "But from what I've seen today, I think that's where they're keeping all of their people who are sick with the plague."

"Really?" Alexius' eyebrows rose. He restrained himself with an effort from looking over the weak spot again.

"Yes - and if I'm right, that means their numbers are dwindling, too. They might have too much on their hands to be concerned about us for much longer."

"Wonderful," the abbot breathed. "I do not wish harm on them, of course, but if they are to be struck down by the hand of God as we are, it will not grieve me."

Sounds on the narrow stone staircase interrupted Leonardo's reply, and he turned to see who was coming to join them. Mari scrambled into sight, holding up the long hem of another new gown - this one in a rich burgundy. She frowned as she came into view.

Alexius, on the other hand, smiled at her with what seemed like genuine cheer. "Princess Mari," he said, bowing to her like a courtier. "How lovely you look in your royal robes!"

Glancing over the child before turning back to his duties, Leo had to admit that she did look much better than the four other surviving children, and that the color of the new gown - made for her from fabric that Alexius had produced from somewhere in the monastery's storehouses - was quite striking in the light from the setting sun.

Mari was no more interested in conversation with the abbot than she was in talking to anyone else, and bore his attentions with an air of resignation. Leonardo was amused to hear the abbot go so far as to offer her the chance to wear his wide silver necklace and jeweled cross, just to try to get her approval. That must have been successful because the next thing Leo knew, the abbot was standing at the battlement again with Mari on his shoulder, pointing out things on the horizon.

"...and on the other side of those mountains, many days journey from here, is Rome, the lost empire," he told her. "Once, we and the Romans were all one people, but they fell into barbarism and depravity, and now Constantinople is the center of the civilized world." He sighed, and went on in a tone that seemed like he was talking more to himself than to the girl. "And it _is_ a civilization, and it will be great again."

Mari wasn't impressed. Leonardo said, "Abbot, if you would please stand back from the edge? I know that they can't hit us, firing from the camp, but you're right out in the open where they can all see you."

"Oh, yes, of course," the abbot turned in a slow circle before stepping away and letting Mari slide off his shoulder. He bowed, and went down the stone steps.

The girl stayed where she was, frowning after him. Her fingers played restlessly over the elaborately decorated cross that the man had left with her.

* * *

Michaelangelo relieved him at midnight. "It's been quiet," Leonardo caught him up. "I saw some movement over by the south side of the camp - I think they're dumping their dead into the river in the dark, when they think we won't notice."

"At least it's flowing away from us," Mike pointed out. He clapped his brother on the shoulder. "Get some sleep, big bro - I'll see you in the morning."

A few hours later, Leonardo rubbed sleep out of his eyes and stretched as he made his way from his blankets to the isolation ward to check on Donatello again. He waved at Michaelangelo, who was on his way to the kitchen to take a turn at feeding the monastery's inhabitants after his hours on watch - all of the survivors found themselves working hard at multiple jobs while under siege.

Leonardo turned the corner to the isolation ward...and found the heavy wooden door wide open.

A chill went down his neck. "Donnie?" he called, breaking into a sprint to the door. "Donatello!" He heard a shout, and footsteps behind him, but didn't heed them as he ran into the ward for the first time.

The air inside stank. Not just unwashed sheets and the peculiar reek that was part of the plague, but the smell of dead bodies and burning - the mingled scents reached out and slapped Leonardo as soon as he'd cleared the doorway.

The five wrapped bundles next to the doorway told him everything he needed to know. He glanced over the bodies, then dismissed them from consideration. "Don?"

"Is he okay?" Michaelangelo skidded into view. "Holy ~!" His eyes went wide, first at the smell, then at the wrapped corpses. He swallowed convulsively.

"Go get the Abbot," Leo ordered, mostly to get Mike moving and out of the stench. "Tell him we have to move them to the crypt. Now, Mike!"

He waited just long enough to see Michaelangelo run off, then resumed his original search.

The sisters' dormitory was a series of dark, narrow rooms that opened off a windowed hallway - all of the windows had been heavily shuttered before the plague began, and were still closed to keep out the cold. Narrow cracks of sunlight filtered through some of the heavy shutters, giving Leo enough light to see into each cell-like room as he passed it. All of them were empty.

At the end of the hall, it widened out into a common room with a massive hearth. Leo sagged a little bit in relief, as his straining eyes landed on the figure of his brother, kneeling next to the fire. "Don?"

Donatello glanced over his shoulder. "Stay there, Leo - I'm almost finished." He turned back to his task - using the hearth to burn what Leo eventually recognized as the mattresses that the dead had lain on.

The dry straw and shabby cloth burned quickly, with a massive spray of red sparks across the stone floor. Judging by the amount of ash - not to mention the smell - Donatello had been at work for a while. Leonardo glanced back down the corridor to watch the monks come to collect the shrouded dead, then walked over to put his hand on Don's shoulder. "Come on," he said, as gently as he could. "You've done enough - let's get you out of here."

"I didn't do enough, Leo," Don's face was still. He poked at the smoldering fire with a stick of kindling. "They all died, no matter what I did. There just...the resources aren't available, Leo. There wasn't anything I could do except keep them alive slightly longer. It would've been quicker and kinder if I'd just slit their throats that first night." His voice was flat and expressionless as he tossed the stick into the fire. "Some of them thought I was a demon, come to take them to hell," he said to the flames. "I don't think I did anything for them at all."

"You kept the threat contained," Leonardo pointed out. He remembered his own despair the night he first came into the village, and his indecision over Stassi's baby brother, and reached for anything that might help. "It hasn't spread to the rest of the humans here, because of you. Remember that." He squeezed his brother's shoulder. "Come on. Let's go."

Donatello insisted on opening all of the shutters, letting cold air and light into the empty rooms all along the dormitory. By the time Leo steered him out into the weak winter sunlight of the courtyard, the bodies were already gone.

* * *

Abbot Alexius usually joined Leonardo for a few minutes every evening on the battlements, to review the enemy's camp and discuss any new concerns. But the night that the last of the plague victims were carried into the catacombs, he didn't appear. Leonardo could hear the sounds of men's voices raised in somber songs, coming through the open doors of the church.

That night, Donatello perched on the inner wall instead, listening to the funeral service while he listlessly picked at a hunk of bread and some cheese that Michaelangelo had forced on him. "It's very strange," he said, frowning thoughtfully. "What is it that Renet does to us that we always understand the language wherever and whenever she sends us? I'm guessing it's the Time Scepter that has some sort of effect on sound perception, but I can't figure out how that applies to our vocalizations, and I really don't understand how it could work if it isn't anywhere nearby. And whatever it does, it never lingers once she's finished with us - I still don't understand Mandarin, or Portuguese, or anything else I don't already speak, once we get home from these little adventures."

Leonardo smiled without looking around at his brother. "You must be feeling better, if these are the things that are rolling around in your head now."

"I feel fine," Don assured him. From the muffled sound, he was talking around a mouthful of food. After a few seconds, he said more clearly, "I was thinking - Leo, why don't we just get out of here? We could find a way out on the blind side of the monastery, get down to the river, and be gone in the night."

"Not you, too," Leo groaned. "Look, I already had this talk with Raph - we're not abandoning these people - "

"Who said anything about abandoning them?" Don interrupted. "Leo, I'm talking about getting _all_ of us out of here! There's only ten humans left, and most of them are healthy enough to travel - we could take all the supplies with us, at least as much as we need to get them to another town or city where they'll be safe. Leave this place to the bandits, and get out here before they starve us out!"

Leonardo swiveled around to look at his brother, who went on munching his bread while he studied the opposite wall of the monastery.

"That's a sheer cliff down to the river," Don said musingly, pointing at the far wall. "But there must be access over there somewhere. For one thing, the well in the kitchen never runs dry because it's dug deep enough to hit the water table. And for another thing, the catacombs were dug into the rock underneath the church. So I wonder..." he fell silent, head tilted slightly while he thought.

Leo turned back to his watch, breathing slowly to tamp down the rising sense of hope. Leave? Take all of their human charges to safety somewhere else, instead of this slow death by siege? It was something he hadn't dared think about.

"The catacombs..." Don said musingly. "I wonder...have you been down there?"

"No," Leo admitted with a twist of distaste on his mouth. "Raph has, though."

"Really?" Don hopped off of his perch and dusted his hands. "I need to talk to him, then." And he was gone.

A few hours later, Michaelangelo surprised him by showing up early for his shift. "Go to our rooms, bro," he insisted, tugging Leo back from his post on the wall. "Go - you really wanna go, I promise you." He jittered with barely-suppressed excitement over something.

Leo studied him for a moment, but Mike just smiled at him and said nothing else.

The same excitement met him when he stepped into their borrowed rooms, and found Raphael and Donatello both still awake, and leaning over a rough sketch on the table. "We can do it, Leo," Don said, his eyes shining. "This is a map of the catacombs - the monks use it to keep track of the burials. And look!" His finger stabbed at something on the bottom of the page.

Leo bent to see it better in the flickering firelight. "Is that...a river access?"

"It is!" Don confirmed. "The monks have access to the river via the catacombs. There's a door down at the riverside, actually underwater for most of the year. They haven't used it in years, but Alexius says that the abbot before him used to take in supplies from merchants who delivered from their boats on the river, during the dry season when the river is low. They haven't used it in twenty years, but - "

"But it's still there," Raph said. He looked up at Leonardo, a gleam of satisfaction in his eyes. "And it means we got a way out of here."


	11. Chapter 11

**Chapter 11**

"No," Abbot Alexius said simply.

"No?" Leonardo repeated in disbelief. Raphael, watching the conversation from the shadows around the deep fireplace, thought he could actually see his brother's blood pressure rise. _They've been arguin' about it long enough, it's pretty clear neither one of 'em is gonna win this… _He shook his head, and went on watching silently. If there was one thing Raphael knew about, it was the futility of trying to argue his brother out of anything, once his mind was made up!

But the abbot didn't have that experience. The man shook his head. "No, Leonardo. I appreciate that you have thought about escape, but it is quite frankly not an acceptable option. We will not leave here."

"Abbot," Leonardo tried again. "Alexius, you've already buried all of the sisters of your order, most of the monks, and thirteen children, not to mention witnessing the deaths of all of the adults in the village. The mercenaries have been at your gates every day, demanding all of your resources. Why in the world would you stay here when there's a way out?"

"This is where the Lord has sent me," the abbot said simply.

Leonardo stared at him for a long moment. "Are you saying," he said slowly, as though he were working it out as he spoke, "that you can't leave without a sign from God?"

"No, of course not," Alexius smiled, but his eyes were tight. "I'm not a simple-minded fool who sees omens in entrails and such! I mean only that I have my duties here, and I will not relinquish them. I was brought here to safeguard this monastery and the Sceptre of Helen."

"Pack it," Leonardo said sharply. "If it's that important to you, then put it in a box and we'll cart it out of here. I don't know why a stick of anything, even gold, would be more important than the lives of your people, but – why are you laughing?"

Raphael tensed. Leonardo's eyes were narrowed, and he looked at the abbot calculatingly – a sure sign that he was pissed off. _Not that I blame 'im – stupid to hang around here, now that we got a way out!_ The Turtles had agreed between themselves that they would be able to leave by midnight that very night, taking themselves and the surviving humans out of the besieged monastery to safety in another town. It wasn't clear what they would do after that, but at least they would be free, and it seemed like it was enough.

With the abbot's laughter, though, it seemed like they might have to leave sooner – Leonardo looked like he was on the verge of losing his famous control, after the past several days of strain. Raphael flicked his gaze across Mari, who stood just inside the doorway looking at the abbot, and made a mental note to take that damn silver cross off of her as soon as he got the chance.

"Oh, I am sorry, Leonardo!" the abbot gasped around his laughter. "I apologize – I had forgotten that you have never seen the Sceptre! 'Pack it' indeed!" He wiped his eyes, and stood. "Come – I will show you why I can do no such thing." He swept toward the door of his room, pausing to offer his hand to Mari.

The girl shook her head, frowning as she always did, and ran to grab Raphael's hand instead. Alexius shrugged and proceeded out of the room without a backward look. Leo and Raph traded puzzled glances, and followed.

"I don't like him," Mari whispered to Raph. She pattered along beside him, holding up the hem of a green velvet gown that matched her eyes and was belted at the waist with one of the Turtles' red masks, which she refused to part with.

"Me, either," Raphael told her.

Mari nodded, satisfied. She had to run every few steps to keep up with Raphael's stride as they hurried after the man.

The abbot swept into the chapel. It was deserted – there was too much work to be done, and very little time for religious ceremonies – but lanterns still flickered around the massive statue of Mary. The gems in the ceiling winked and sparkled. The enormous dress swayed in the breeze from the open doorway.

Alexius marched up to the statue, seized the hem of the dress in his hands, and pulled hard. "Look on the Sceptre of Saint Helen!" he commanded, as the dress fell apart and cascaded down in massive folds of blue silk.

Mari gasped out loud and clutched Raph's hand even harder.

He didn't blame her a bit. "Wow," he said, impressed in spite of himself.

Someone, at some point, had carved a massive niche into the body of the old statue, and lined it all in silver. More gems were set into the metal, catching the flickering light. And set in the middle of it all was a massive, elaborately-embellished, gem-crusted golden staff – it looked like it was only a little bit shorter than Don's lost bo, though easily twice as thick. At the top of the staff, right where Mary's collarbone should be, there was a cage-like box made of gold and crystal. "The bones of Saint Helen herself are in that reliquary," Alexius pointed, his voice hushed.

"Not all of them," Leonardo sounded like he was unimpressed. "And her dead finger can't possibly be more important to you than your living people."

Abbot Alexius bowed his head to the statue. "I cannot expect you to understand – you are not from here, and our ways are not your own. But this is one of the holiest relics in all of the Empire! Pilgrims come from all over the lands, even as far away as Spain, to pray to Helen here."

"And when they next come here, they will find only a blackened ruin, and a dead village!" Leo pointed out, eyes blazing with his anger. "I don't care about the gold and the jewels – I want to get your people out of here!"

"No." The abbot was firm, again. "We will not leave. It is our duty to defend the Sceptre." He drew himself up to his full height and looked down at the Turtles. "I am sure you understand some small part of what it is like to have a duty."

Leonardo sucked in a breath. Raphael's lip curled – the abbot had gotten his brother in his weakest spot.

After a tense moment, the abbot turned abruptly back to the statue, bowed to it, and then turned on his heel and strode out of the chapel.

* * *

"I can't believe someone did this to this statue," Donatello shook his head as he walked back and forth in front of Mary. "What a loss!"

"I don't care about that right now, Don," Leo waved off his brother's dismay. "Can it be removed? If we can even get the Sceptre out, maybe Alexius will see reason."

"I doubt that," Don said dryly. He scrambled up onto the statue's base, and studied the Sceptre. "People with strong convictions are remarkably impervious to anything that might cause them to re-examine those convictions – Raph, stop laughing."

He tried to smother it under a cough. "Wasn't laughing," he said, resolutely not looking at Leo.

"Mmm," Don reached up behind the Sceptre, testing the way that it was anchored in its niche. "It's locked in here pretty well." He turned to look at his brothers. "If it's really made out of gold, that's a soft metal – I should be able to get it out of there. But I don't think that it's really gold all the way through. Probably just a hammered layer over a wood core. I'm not sure what was used to weld it in place, though, and that's going to be the problem."

"Maybe we can just get the reliquary out?" Leo pointed. "If that's the most important thing to them, maybe it's enough if we just get that?"

Don tilted his head back to squint up at the crystal box. "Sure. I can get that down, no problem."

"There's no way a little old lady used this," Raphael had been studying the Sceptre himself, from a vantage point away from the statue. "I mean, it's gotta weigh way too much for that!"

Don nodded. "Yes, you're right – if it's solid gold, it's got to weigh more than a hundred pounds! That's too much weight for an average human to handle." He hopped down off the base of the statue. "Which is either an argument in favor of it being just a thin coating over a wood core, or it's a post-mortem artifact that has been mistakenly attributed to Helen."

"Whatever," now it was Raph's turn to wave off his brother's musing. "We got more important things to do. Are you ready for this?"

Both Leo and Don looked uneasy. But both nodded. ""Let's go," Leo ordered. "Raph, you know where we're going – lead the way."

Raphael looked over at Mari. "Go find Mike, kid," he told her roughly. "I gotta go someplace you can't go with me."

She nodded, but didn't move. Raphael started to order her more firmly, reconsidered it, and shrugged. If she wanted to hang out in the chapel, what harm could there be in it?

The three Turtles went around to the back of the statue, and began the descent into the carved tunnels of the crypt.

They didn't speak until they'd gotten all the way through the newest section of graves – the wall niches that held the bodies of everyone who had died of the plague, from the sisters who died before the Turtles arrived (their graves were sealed with stones and neatly labeled with their names) to the graves of the children who had died only two days earlier (they lay three deep in each open niche, and their names hadn't been marked on the walls.) Raphael hoisted his torch up and resolutely didn't look at the bodies.

It wasn't until they got into the older section, where the graves predated the plague and were still neatly maintained, that they dared take a breath. "They usually go deeper to bury the dead, but the plague freaked them out and they put 'em too close to the surface," Raph explained. The smell of rot lingered in the stillness of the carved tunnels, and he hated the way it tasted in his throat, so he didn't want to speak too much.

As they went deeper below the surface, the air began to smell damp, too. The carved graves were more erratic, and more elaborate, as they picked their way down deeply carved stairs. "Look at this," Donatello lifted his own torch to get a better look at a massive tomb carved to look like a Roman temple. "Does this date back to the time before the monastery?"

"Don't care, Don," Raphael rolled his eyes. "We gotta find a way out of here, 'n that's all that matters."

Reluctantly, Don abandoned the carvings and hurried to catch up with his brothers.

The smell of water slowly overwhelmed the smell of rotting flesh. "We must be close," Leo murmured. The steps under their feet were wide, slippery, and uneven.

Raphael stopped short. "Yeah…I think we are." He gestured with his torch. The light shone across a wet, shimmering surface. The steps disappeared under the surface of the water.

"The gate must be down there," Don peered over Leo's shoulder.

"Duh, Einstein," Raphael snapped. "I knew we brought you along for a reason."

Don grinned, unruffled by the display of irritation. "Of course you did, Raph – you brought me along because I had the foresight to bring along a water-resistant flashlight." He waggled the slim metal tube at his brother.

"You!" Raph lunged for the flashlight. "Have you had that all this time?"

"Of course," Don yanked it back out of reach. "I always carry a flashlight. I didn't want to use it before now, partly because I don't have spare batteries, and partly due to the possible time anachronisms and issues it might cause – "

"Whatever. Give it to me, brainiac. I'm gonna find our way out of here," Raphael held out his hand.

Don took a breath to protest, but Leo cut him off. "Don. Give him the flashlight. We don't have much time."

Raphael grinned without any real humor in it as Don deflated and handed over the flashlight. Then he turned and felt for the next step, below the surface of the water. And the next, and the next…

The water was cold as it rose around him. His brothers held their torches up, but it didn't help him much, since the light reflected off the surface and didn't illuminate anything below it.

The light wavered as Don shifted his position. "Leo, I've been wondering," he began in a soft voice that still echoed across the surface of the water and carried clearly to Raphael as he groped for the next step with his toes, "Alexius said that one of the monks is a royal bastard, right? Has he ever said who it is?" At Leo's murmured negative, Don continued, "Why won't he identify this person, I wonder? How do we know it wasn't one of the dead monks?"

Raphael's toes found the next step, and he took a deep breath before finally to fully submerge, and so he missed whatever answer Leo might have given. _Hafta remember to follow up on that when I get back,_ he thought, and turned on the flashlight.

The monks' underwater gate was only a yard away from his face. Raphael reached out through the cloudy water with his free hand, and tested it – the metal bars swung slowly away from his touch. If he squinted, he could see daylight filtering into the river on the other side of the gate.

He kicked up to the surface. "Leo!" he called out. "I found it!" A few powerful strokes put him back onto the shallow steps, and his brothers reached to pull him out of the water completely. "You aren't gonna believe this – it ain't locked!"

Leo's eyes widened. "Are you kidding me?"

"Well, it sort of makes sense," Don mused. "In normal circumstance, the crypt is sealed, and there are always monks or sisters in religious service in the chapel itself, so…" he trailed off, frowning as he reconsidered. "Do they really think that's enough security?"

"It doesn't matter now," Leo's expression hardened. "We've got our way out, and clear. We just need to gather some supplies, and find out who is willing to come with us."

"So we're still leavin'?" Raphael fought down the urge to shiver.

"We are," Leo pushed him up the steps. "We've done all we can do here. It's time we get out of here, find Renet, and figure out what we've got to do to get home."

They climbed back up faster than they'd found their way down, and clambered up out of the crypt into the chapel. Mari was gone, Raphael noted with satisfaction. "I gotta dry off," he stalked off toward their rooms.

"Meet us on the battlements – we've got to brief Mike!" Leo called after him.

Raphael found their rooms empty, as expected. He took a couple of minutes to rinse out the lingering taste of decay in his mouth and throat. Then he chafed out the chill in his skin with one of their blankets, checked his sai, and headed back out to find his brothers.

"…the guy who came to the gate wasn't the guy who came the first time," Michaelangelo was reporting soberly to Leo and Don as Raph joined them on the battlements. "It looks like they've lost a lot of their people to the plague, too."

"But they still sent someone to make demands," Leonardo mused. "So they aren't giving up."

"Barbarians at the gate, huh?" Raph grinned tightly. "Won't they be surprised when they finally get in, and there's nobody home!"

"Alexius won't leave," Mike shook his head. "He said as much, before he went to the gate to talk to the guys from the camp."

"I don't know why he even bothers," Raphael said. "If he's not gonna give in, and they aren't gonna change, why keep talking?"

"They have to go through the motions," Leo waved this off. "It's not our problem anymore. Let's start asking the monks if they want to leave with us, and start gathering supplies. Mike, can you gather up the kids? Maybe get Benni to help you with them – I don't plan to leave them here, no matter what Alexius says."

"Sure," Mike nodded. "Maybe Mari can help me with that, too, once she gets back."

"Gets back from where?" Raph glanced around, surprised. It hadn't even occurred to him that she wasn't in arm's reach of Michaelangelo.

"She went with Alexius," Mike shrugged. "She didn't look happy about it, but it didn't look like they'd be gone long. I thought he might be getting her another dress or something." He rolled his eyes. "He spends way too much time making sure that girl is dressed up like a little doll, and it kinda creeps me out."

"Yeah, me too," Raph muttered. He craned his neck to look at the small gate. It was slightly ajar, as Alexius met under a truce with whoever was currently leading the mercenaries. He felt uneasiness crawl under his shell. "Think I'll go check out how things are going…"

"Raph, we really need to start gathering supplies – the sun will be down soon, and I want to get out of here as soon as it's full dark…Raph?"

"Yeah, yeah, I heard ya, Fearless," Raph waved him off, and walked down the battlements toward the gate. Something about the whole situation made him uneasy, and he felt compelled to go and check on the little girl. He dropped into a silent walk, creeping up on the gate, without even realizing it.

"Raph," Leo's hand on his arm stopped him.

"I gotta check on her, Leo," he insisted, without turning to look at his brother. "I got a bad feeling about this…"

Miraculously, Leonardo didn't argue at all, but fell into step behind him.

Seconds later, the small door in the gate opened completely. Alexius stepped through it, turned, and barred it shut.

The man was alone.

"Alexius!" Raph shouted. "Where's Mari?"

The man glanced up, startled. The strangest expression of satisfaction crossed his face, as he called back loudly, "I've given the mercenaries the prize they most wanted – the royal bastard. They will leave us alone now that they have the Princess Mari!"

"What?" Leonardo and Raphael said at the same time. Raph darted over to the outer wall.

The small mercenary force that had come to the gate was halfway back to the camp. They marched with speed and purpose. And in their midst, one large man carried Mari on his shoulder.

She turned and saw Raphael on the battlements, and her arms went out toward him. He could see the shine of tears on her face.

"MARI!" He scrambled up to launch himself into battle, to get the little girl back…

"NO!" Leonardo yanked him back down. "Raph – "

"Let me go!" he raged. "I gotta get her back – !"

"LOOK!" Leo insisted. He dragged his brother to the inner wall. "Look at the chapel!"

Raphael looked down, vibrating with fury, just in time to see a wet and grubby man dart out of the chapel, seize a nearby child – Benni – and cut his throat. Screams went up all around. More men scrambled out into the courtyard.

Raphael gasped, "What?"

"Alexius is an idiot," Leonardo said grimly. He drew his swords. "And I am, too – while he was lying to the mercenaries about Mari, they saw the gate underwater, and used it to invade! Come on!" And he leaped off the battlements onto the stairs, then raced down into the fray.

Donatello and Michaelangelo were already there, fighting to defend the handful of living children. "Get back, get into the kitchen!" Don called, his voice echoing around the tight spaces of the courtyard. "Go!"

The children were too paralyzed with fear to move.

Raphael dove after his brothers, weapons out.

They were outnumbered and surrounded, but they fought on anyway. Raphael slipped in Benni's blood, caught himself, and had a brief glimpse of men swarming up the side of the statue of Mary in the chapel, prying gems out of their settings, before the battle swept him on.

Michaelangelo cried out as someone's lucky shot caught him across the back of the thigh, and he went down.

"Mikey!" Raph stood over him. "You gonna be okay?" He used his own legs to sweep an idiot who ran up to him with a spear, seized the weapon from the man, and impaled him with it.

"Y-yeah," Mike got out. He grabbed the arrow up off the ground and plunged it into the eye of another man. "I just gotta – "

There was a massive, earth-shaking crash. "They pulled the statue over!" Don called.

Bizarrely, the mercenaries began to cheer. A handful of them even left the fight to go back into the chapel to loot. It gave the Turtles a tiny bit of breathing space.

"Fall back to the kitchen!" Leo bent to help Mike up. Blood ran down his katana blade. "We can defend it – "

A light blossomed in the air over their heads. The remaining mercenaries fell back, crying out in surprise, and leaving the four Turtles underneath the light, which grew outward into a swirling pattern.

Before any of them could say anything, the time tunnel reached out and pulled all four of them in and far away.


	12. Chapter 12

**Chapter 12**

Michaelangelo couldn't breathe.

The time portal seemed to be taking a lot longer than it should, and he couldn't draw a real breath. He could feel Leonardo's hand on his arm still, and it reassured him a little bit. He could hold his breath a little bit longer – but where were his other brothers?

It was quiet, too. The time portals weren't usually quiet, were they?

The slice across the back of his leg throbbed once, intensely, and he gasped out loud without hearing it. Leonardo's hand tightened on his arm.

He _could_ move, he discovered, as long as he did it slowly. It was like moving through thick mud. Michaelangelo craned his neck around, moving slowly and painfully, until he could see Donatello off to his left. Don was looking back, watching Mike and Leo calmly. The corners of his mouth twitched upward, just the slightest bit, and Mike relaxed – his brother wouldn't be so calm if Raph were missing. _So Raphie must be around here somewhere?_

But he still couldn't breathe. And the pressure in his chest was starting to get uncomfortable.

Black spots appeared in the corners of his vision…

And then he was in free-fall. The lights changed around him, swirling bright colors and darkness, and all of his remaining breath got knocked out of him as he fell, hard and badly, onto a graveled surface. For e few seconds, all Mike could do was lay there, gasping at the sky and wishing his lungs would cooperate. _This place seems familiar_, he thought, as sound drifted to his ears and he grew accustomed to the washed-out, color-splashed sky overhead.

"Mike," Leo's face swam into view. "Mike, are you okay?"

"Uhhn." _Now that sounded really intelligent, didn't it?_ Mike rolled over, slowly, and squinted around. His voice rasped, once he finally got control of it. "I'm...okay. I'm okay."

"We're home," Donatello didn't sound quite as relieved as he should have, considering everything. He grabbed Mike's upper arm and hauled him to his feet.

"Of course you're home!" Renet said brightly. "I wouldn't leave you there, once it was over!"

Mike whipped his head around so fast he got dizzy. He leaned on Don and opened his mouth to ask the obvious question – _What are you talking about?_ – but someone else beat him to it.

"Take us back!" Raphael demanded, stepping forward. "We gotta get Mari outta there!"

"Nono, Raphie, it's okay!" she smiled, but it looked a little bit strained. "You guys were perfect – you did exactly the right things! Everything's okay with that time now! I mean, like, all the things that need to happen…well, they're gonna happen now! Because of you – urk!" She cut herself off and looked down at the sai that was pointed directly at the tip of her nose. Her eyes crossed.

"Send. Us. Back." Raphael sounded even scarier than he looked.

"I can't!" she squeaked. "I can't re-open that time portal to put you back there! It wouldn't work that way!"

"Why wouldn't it work – ?" Don began.

"She's just a little girl!"

"All of the people left in the monastery – "

Under the onslaught of rising voices and frantic questions, Renet backed away from Raph's weapon and put her hands over her ears. "Stop it!" She squeezed her eyes shut. Her ridiculous hat fell off. "Stop it, stop it! I can't explain it!"

"I don't want an explanation," Raphael gritted. "I wanna get that little girl someplace safe, and I want you to stay outta the way once you open that stupid time portal to get me to her."

"We're not opening a portal back there," someone barked. "Like Renet said, it's over. Done. Finished."

Lord Simultaneous strolled into view, dusting his hands.

"What are you doing here?" Mike finally managed to get a question out.

The man rolled his eyes. "Short memory spans, eh? Renet told you, this was a test for her. An _important_ test. And since you boys did everything right," he gave them all a look that clearly said he'd been skeptical, "she passed. So, we're done here."

"Wait." Leonardo, when he felt like it, could dominate a room with that voice. And he obviously felt like it now. "We're not 'done' at all. You owe us an explanation." He slid one katana back into its sheath, but held onto the other one. Lights gleamed off the steel. "Now."

"It's like this," Renet began hastily. "I had to prove that I could chose allies to help me in my work, once I get further into my training. 'Cause there's some stuff I just can't do, right? At least, not by myself. So I had to prove that my friends – you guys – could be counted on, even if I wasn't around to give direction and stuff."

"So where were you that whole time?" Don frowned at her.

"In the 79th Level of Null Time, of course. I didn't leave, once I'd taken you through there for, like, your inoculations and stuff."

"Inoculations?" Now Don's expression actually darkened. "You mean you did medical experiments on us?"

"Of course not, silly!" Renet seemed to know she'd messed up, but didn't realize exactly how. "We'd never! We just, sorta, knew how to make sure you'd get some immunity to the plague, since I was kinda sending you into a bad place for it – "

"Except for you," Lord Simultaneous, in turn, frowned at Don. "It should've been the same for you as it was for your brothers, but you had a bad reaction and actually developed the plague instead." Then his expression cleared and he waved this off like it was no big deal. "At least nothing happened when we brought you back. How's your leg?"

Mike realized, with a start, that this was directed at him. Reminded, he slid his hand around the back of his thigh. But were he expected to find blood and swelling, he found nothing. "Hey, it's gone!"

"Of course it is – we cleaned you boys up, before you got back here. Couldn't risk having you bring back some kind of illness."

Leonardo studied the naked blade in his hand, eyes narrowing at the lack of blood.

"I don't care about any of this shit," Raphael growled. He stepped forward again, causing Renet to flinch away from him. "Send us back to get Mari – she's in danger!"

"She's not!" Renet squeaked. "She's not, she's perfectly fine, everything is okay for her now!"

"Everything is not okay!" Raphael lost his temper completely and shouted at her. The muscles in his neck stood out like cords. "That little girl is in the hands of rapists and killers, and _everything is not okay!_"

Renet cowered. "That-that was the whole point," she whimpered.

Lord Simultaneous' eyes gleamed in the low light coming up from the noisy street below. "We had to make sure that little girl grew up to get married to the right person."

"What. Are you. _Talking about?_" Raphael abandoned Renet and turned on her mentor instead. "She's five years old – she ain't gettin' married!"

"She will someday," Simultaneous was unmoved by the Turtle who quivered with fury in front of him. "Alexius made sure the mercenaries thought she was the royal bastard, didn't he? Dressed her up in expensive fabrics, put jewelry on her, made sure they could see her from the camp, played up the differences between her and the grubby children from the village. And it worked. The leader of the mercenaries – the first leader – he knew the royal bastard was a grown man, and a brother of the emperor in Constantinople. But that leader died of the plague. And so did his second in command, and the third. So no one was left who knew."

Michaelangelo remembered how Alexius had treated Mari, and felt his heart sink. "He told them she was the royal bastard…_daughter_ of the emperor?"

"Yes," Simultaneous nodded approvingly. "And there wasn't anyone to know different. He got the idea from you," he looked Mike straight in the eye.

"ME?" Mike was indignant. "I never – "

"You called her 'princess'," Don remembered out loud. "Ever since she first joined us, you called her that."

"I-I…I did, didn't I?" Mike finished in a whisper. "Raph…"

"Don't," Raphael growled. "Don't you even _try_ to make this Mike's fault." He brandished a sai at Simultaneous. "Get me back to her."

The short man shook his head. "You don't give up, do you? I suppose that's a good trait." He glanced at Renet. "You pick your friends well, I'll give you that."

"She's not my – !"

"At any rate," Simultaneous interrupted Raph's outburst. "The mercenaries who took her away from the monastery think that she's a royal bastard. She's worth a lot of money to them, as long as they keep her alive and safe. And they will. They did. They took her to the local lordling, and offered her to him for a ransom. That lordling has his hands full dealing with the crisis caused by the plague, but he knows a good thing when he sees it, so he pays the money and takes her as a bride for his son, who's only a few years older than her. She'll grow up healthy and strong, and have a lot of healthy children. And that's what we needed to happen here." He dusted his hands off again. "And so we're done here, boys! Renet'll be in touch when she needs you again – "

"Wait," Don let go of Mike's arm at last and stepped forward. "Why was it so important that Mari live to have children? What's so important about one little girl in that time and place?"

"It's not her – it's her descendent," Renet blurted out. She didn't see the quelling look that Simultaneous shot at her. "Mari's youngest daughter, Marianna, will grow up and marry an even bigger lord named Alexander. Marianna will be the mother of Cneajna, who will grow up to be the second wife of the Duke of Wallachia. And it's Cneajna's oldest son, Vlad, who was the reason for all of this."

Silence fell on the rooftop while the Turtles processed all of this. Simultaneous shot Renet another look, then watched the four Turtles with a hooded expression.

Something stirred in the back of Mike's mind, something that he associated with long hours spent reading scary stories that weren't necessarily fiction. Wallachia was the name of a place that triggered memories of reading about castles, and battles, and people dying in horrible ways for the amusement of a man who enjoyed their suffering. _'Wallachia' reminds me of something…something to do with scary castles, and bloodthirsty rulers, and Transylvania…_ He sucked in a breath and looked around at his brothers, seeing that they didn't yet realize what he'd figured out. "Are you telling us," he said slowly, his voice rising in pitch and speed as the pieces fell into place, "that you sent us back into a plague zone, made us fight bandits, and let all of those people die…_just so Vlad Dracula could be born!_"

"Vlad the Impaler?" Don's eyes went dark as he turned on Simultaneous. "You sent us back there so one of history's biggest sociopaths could exist?"

"Mari is related to…?" Raph stepped back. His weapons dropped to his sides as his arms and his expression went lax.

"Yes," Simultaneous folded his arms and glared at all of them equally. "As a cultural touchstone, the person you know as Dracula is immensely important. Long after every civilization of this time has changed or faded, this is something that endures. The children of this planet will still be telling stories about Dracula after they've colonized all the planets in the area, and finally initiated their own contact with other inhabited worlds. Even in the 79th Level of Null Time, we hear stories about him! In a way, he's one of the most long-lasting icons of this planet – where are you going?"

Raphael had backed away while Simultaneous spoke, wearing a blank expression that had the slightest hint of horror in it. He glanced blindly in the direction of his brothers. "I'm going home," he said flatly.

Without waiting for a response, he turned and leaped for the next roof, and was gone.

"I'll…go with him," Don frowned. He faded into the darkness after Raphael, but not before Mike saw that he was limping again.

"It's time we were going too, girl," Simultaneous began. He reached out – to start a spell? To grab Renet's arm? Mike didn't know, and it didn't matter, because Leonardo interrupted by stepping forward to put the point of his sword to Renet's throat.

"We are not friends," he said to her levelly, down the length of the steel. "You will not call on us to help you. You will not drag my brothers into any more of your little tests. Whatever you have left to do as a Timestress, you will do without us."

Renet squeaked. Lord Simultaneous stepped forward, concerned, only to fall back as Leo unsheathed his other katana and pointed it at the short man in a smooth gesture, without ever taking his eyes off Renet.

"If I see you again," Leo continued, his voice soft and deadly, "I will kill you. Do you understand me? You've hurt my brothers for the last time."

Tears welled in her eyes. "But, Leo!" she wailed.

"No," he was implacable. "Never again."

She sniffled. "I thought we were friends," Renet whispered.

Leonardo stepped back from both of them. "Friends don't only show up to put you in danger, abandon you, and break your heart," he told her flatly. "And that's all you've done for us." He kept both blades out until he was several steps away from them. "Mike. Let's go."

Michaelangelo knew when not to say anything. With one last glance at Renet and her mentor, he turned and ran for the next roof, rolled on impact, and came up running in the direction his brothers had gone.

If he strained his ears, he could hear Leo running behind him. He didn't want to strain, though – when he did, Michaelangelo could also hear the sound of Renet's sobs, fading away behind them as they ran.

* * *

Two days later, Mike wandered past Don's open bedroom door on his way to evening practice. Something caught his eye, and he stopped and backed up to get a better look. "Raph?"

His brother stirred at his approach, but didn't look up from the computer screen.

Michaelangelo leaned over his shoulder to see what was so interesting. "Oh. Those are pics of Dracula, huh?"

"Propaganda etchings of Vlad the Third," Donatello corrected. He was sitting crosslegged on his bed, sanding the length of a new bo. "There aren't any known contemporary depictions of him, only paintings and engravings done after his death, by people who'd never seen him." His eyes flicked up at Raphael, who continued to tab through the pictures on the screen.

"He doesn't even look like her," Raphael said quietly. He settled on a painting of a dark-eyed man with a mustache that looked fake. A pearl-studded cap of red velvet sat over long ringlets of dark hair that flowed over his shoulders.

"The hair, maybe," Mike reached out and traced his finger along the edge of the picture on the screen. "Mari's hair kinda looked like this, when it was clean and brushed…"

Donatello hopped off the bed and came over to get a good look. After a long moment, he offered, "She's only one of his eight great-grandparents, Raph. It's not likely that anything about her was carried cleanly down to him."

Raphael frowned, but said nothing. His eyes were locked on the dark curls in the painting.

"Guys?" Leonardo poked his head in the room. "Time for practice."

"Coming," Don said automatically. No one moved, though.

Michaelangelo felt Leonardo come up behind him and look at the screen, too.

"He's got the same hair she had," Leo said.

At that, Raphael took a deep breath and pushed back from the desk, forcing his brothers backward, too. "Okay, enough. Time for practice."

"Raph?" Leo reached out and took him by the shoulder. "Are you…?"

"M'fine," Raph shrugged out of his brother's grip. "I keep tellin' you guys, I'm fine. Stop acting like a mother hen, Leo, geez…" and he stalked out, heading toward the dojo.

"He's gonna be okay," Mike said quietly.

"Yeah," Leo nodded. "He will. Just…he doesn't need to be okay right away."

Don holstered his new bo. "He'll talk when he feels like talking. You know Raph – you can't force him into anything." He followed Leo out and down the hall to the dojo.

Mike lingered for a few moments, looking thoughtfully at the image on the screen. He traced down the length of the dark curls on the painted figure one last time, remembering the feel of Mari's silky hair wrapped around his fingers.

And then he snapped the monitor off and went to practice.

_Life is good…and life goes on. _


End file.
